Bugs are an inevitable part of the software development process. They not only lower the product’s quality but take a toll on indirect costs and time of the Quality Assurance (QA) team, who have to get rid of them. One way to address this problem is to address it sooner than leave it pending until the end of the software development life cycle (SDLC).
Examining the costs of fixing bugs at different stages of the SDLC shall give us a good understanding of the advantages of earlier bugs fixing. The Systems Science Institute at IBM (SSIB) reported that it costs six times more to fix a bug during the implementation phase and thirty times more in the post product release phase, instead of the design phase. It is thus best to catch bugs in the design phase with effective bug management tools.
Here are some testing tips to find bugs earlier in SDLC and reduce costs:
Testers can communicate with business owners to assess the security risks to the system. The next step is to create a threat model identifying threats and security measures and the equation between them. This risk analysis checks for known and unknown attack patterns in every layer of the software and provides advice to address each vulnerability.
An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a software suite that consolidates tools required for software writing and testing. When a bug tracker can be integrated with other test management tools, applications can be managed collectively, bringing costs down. An integrated bug tracker traces the bug to the particular failed test case and the corresponding requirement. With this, developments can take corrective action faster.
Both self-review and peer review are useful for detecting defects. Developers should review their codes as well as those of fellow team members. Humans tend to fall in a repeat pattern and make the same mistakes instead of new ones. Having a checklist of common errors can break this tendency and remind the developer of identifying and fixing the defect in the writing process.
Once bugs are identified, it is important to record them rightly with as much detail and nuanced explanation. This will allow testers to conduct a useful root cause analysis. Exploring the root causes of the bug will then direct the team to make necessary changes to eliminate the bugs and prevent them from appearing again.
Once a defect has been identified, testers should implement the security measures to prevent re-occurrence. The app has to be constantly monitored to check for new or same issues. To achieve this, the development team and management have to work collectively. Testers make an action plan for deploying the modification, or initiating a new security process. Activities like checking monthly status of the defects, regular team meetings on errors and solutions are effective in monitoring the defect management process. Teamwork is the only solution to reducing bug tracking costs.