Defect Statuses – What do they mean?

When raising a defect against the software under test, one of the key fields that helps us track, manage and report on defects is the ‘Status’ field.

Whether you are using JIRA, Excel or or one of the many bug tracking solutions in the market, maintaining the correct status is key to ensuring defects are analysed and resolved swiftly, and that your reporting is accurately representing the current state of affairs.

Here are a list of common Defect Statuses and a definition of each:

A newly logged Defect/Bug in the Defect Management System. It has not yet been reviewed or assigned out for review.

The Defect has been reviewed by the Defect Triage and is considered repeatable and valid.

The Defect is assigned to a Developer/Engineer for Analysis & Resolution.

(Sometime ‘Dev in Progress’) The Developer has picked up the defect and is attempting to replicate, analyse and resolve it before confirming their resolution by Testing it themselves.

The defect has been fixed by the developer in the Development Environment. It has not been deployed to the Test Environment at this stage.

The fix has been deployed to the test environment and is ready for retest.

The Reporter has picked up the defect and is attempting to replicate it by following the original set of steps that led to the discovery.

The Reporter was unable to replicate the original Defect and has passed and closed this defect with comments and/or screenshots.

The Reporter was able to replicate the original Defect and has reopened this defect with comments and/or screenshots, assigning it back to either the Triage or Developer that worked on the fix. (This depends upon the agreed Defect Process)

The fix is delayed due to other priorities. It may be picked up again at a later date within this Test phase or Project timeline.

The Defect fix has been moved out to another, later phase or project. This is normally done as part of a review with a senior representative of the Business (ie Product Owner, Senior BA)

Keeping defects in their correct status requires a daily (at least) review of your defect management dashboard to ensure that they are being correctly moved along with information added etc.

Good defect process is the key to speeding up your resolution times, coupled with a regular review of priorities to ensure the right things are being resolved first.

If you need help with cleaning up your defect processes or implementing a defect management process and/or tool, have a chat to the team at luvo consulting via [email protected]