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Defect Management
Defect management is the definition of frameworks and standards for issue / defect management within both a Waterfall and Agile environment. Hands on defect management which includes; coordination between the test teams and resolver groups, assessing programme impact both in terms of business criticality and technical severity, escalation and reporting as well as assessing impact on the test execution plan. Provision of root cause analysis, trend analysis and injection phase tracking and assessment to drive defect detection at the earliest stage possible. Managing out of any residual issues via workarounds or backlog management.
The defect burndown chart below is generated using data collected from a mature defect management process. The data can then be plotted against time to show the defect rate vs date.
Once the defects start burning down and no longer burn up, a downward trend can be calculated to give a rough indication of completion date. On a healthy release, this trend is a very smooth downward curve however if there are problems with the release then this will be displayed as additional bumps – hence the expression bumps on the road.
A mature process allows the capture of the correct data for the creation of metrics and key performance indicators which help identify problems in the software testing process and can generate recommendations to combat these problems in the future.
Recording good data and generating metrics allows for the comparison of Test Phase Detected (TPD) (the test phase the defect was found in) vs Test Phase Injected (TPI) (the test phase the defect was actually introduced).
