How to write an Ideal Bug Report for Mobile App Development

by Tech Gropse Web and Mobile App Development Company

Many beta testers and end users don’t know how to write a bug report that includes the details a mobile app developer needs to know in order to fix the bug. Bug reporting is an important thing in software testing. An effective bug report is a medium to communicate well with the app development team and testing team to avoid confusion.

A bug report or defect report is a list of bugs found out by mobile app testers while testing the software in testing phase under a testing environment. The test environment created at development site is same as the actual environment in which the software is supposed to run or work in a live situation. Bugs or defect report is the most important tool for mobile app developers understand where the product that has been built by them is lacking in its performance or functionality. Testers have to be very careful in studying business and customer requirements while building their test cases and test plan. The quality of test cases will clearly enhance the core performance and functionality of the product built.

Ideal Bug Report

First of all, we should know how an ideal report looks like and what important information it contains? While there may be a small variation in report based on the application, but basically the bug report contains these things like Bug Name, Bug Id, assigned to, Status Reported by, Reported date, etc. Before creating the bug report, we should have knowledge of the Severity and the Priority because mobile app developers solve the bug based on the Severity and Priority. Now, you must be thinking of what severity and priority is:

Severity and Priority

Severity is defined as the degree of impact a defect has on the mobile app development or operation of a component application being tested. The priority of the bug shows that in which order bug should be fixed. Higher the priority shows that the defect should be resolved sooner. The usual classification is:

Defect severity can be categorized into four classes

Critical: This defect indicates complete shutdown of the process, nothing can proceed after that. E.g. Crash in the mobile application
Major: It is a highly severe defect and the system collapses. However, certain parts of the system remain functional
Medium: It causes any undesirable change in the software, but the system still works functionally
Low: It don’t cause any major break-down of the system

Defect priority can be categorized into three classes

Low: The Defect is a problem but it can be fixed by repairing
Medium: During the normal mobile app development process defect should be resolved. It can wait until a new version of the software is created
High: This defect must be resolved as soon as possible because it affects the system and cannot be used until it is fixed

Here is How You Can Create a Simple Bug Report:

Bug Name: Application crash on clicking the Save button after editing the profile.

Bug ID: It will be automatically created by the BUG Tracking tool once you save this bug and it’s always unique

Area Path: Splash screen> >login screen>>home page>>profile

Build Number: Version Number 5.0.2

Severity: HIGH (High/Medium/Low) or 1

Priority: HIGH (High/Medium/Low) or 1

Assigned to: Developer-X

Reported By: Tester Name

Reported On: Date

Reason: Defect

Status: New/Open/Active/Fixed (Depends on the Tool you are using)

Environment: Windows / IOS

Title: It should be a short explanation about the issue. A good title should have information about what is the problem or steps you were doing when it failed.

For example: Assume, you have found a bug in the profile page while uploading a profile picture that took a particular file format (i.e., png file). System is crashing while uploading a png file.

Title: “Uploading a png file (Profile Picture) in the Profile Page crashes the application”

Description

This is an overview of the bug and how and when bug occurs, written in shorthand. This part includes more details in compare to title, like how frequently the bug appears if it is an intermittent error and the circumstances that seem to trigger it.

Environment

Mobile application can have completely different behaviour depending on their environment. This part should include all the details about the environment setup and configuration on which the application is running.