Defect Management Tools 101: How To Choose and Use

What do you know about defect management tools? What is the best defect management tool? What is the role of defect management tools in software testing? This article was written to help you find the answers to these questions.

Defect management tools have become an important part of software development process in recent years. Before speaking about them it is necessary to find the definition for defect management.

Actually, defect management is the process that is usually conducted at the stage of final product testing. It is required to find all bugs that occurred during the initial stages of project performance and fix them before delivering the product to the customer. Defect management is quite a complex process that is subdivided into four main stages.

Each of them can be simplified by using defect management tools. Let’s look how a typical bug management tool works.

1. The first stage of bug management process is the stage of defect detection. Before the bug management tools were invented, the developers had to do that themselves. This process took a lot of time. But the modern defect management systems can simplify it greatly. They can test the final product without human involvement, so the testers may perform other tasks while the system is searching for defects.

2. At the next stage of bug management process, the defects must be reported. A defect report is a document that contains all information about the bug, including the time of its detection and its type. Creating bug reports is not a simple task. For a typical software developer, it takes lots of time to write a defect report without a bug management tool. Defect tracking systems simplify this task strongly. They can not only write defect reports automatically but also visualize their history.

3. After the bugs are reported they must be fixed and tested repeatedly. To simplify the process of repeated testing, it may be conducted with the help of defect management tools. As we have already mentioned they are quite suitable for this goal.

4. The final stage of the bug management process is the stage of bug list creation. Today it is difficult to imagine a software developer who performs this task without a defect management tool. The bug list is necessary to avoid similar bugs in future and to fix them within the shortest time in case they occur.

The list of modern defect management tools is extremely large. Each one of our readers can find lots of them on the Internet. There is probably no need to make a defect management tools comparison because every software development team chooses them according to its own needs and budget.

However, it is necessary to describe some main features that a good defect tracking software must have.

• First of all, a good defect tracking tool must have a wide functionality. It is the main thing to make the work of your team simpler. The bug tracker must be able to perform as many tasks as it is possible. Most modern defect tracking systems have wide functionality, so there is no need to look for a suitable one for a long time. It is also good if your bug tracker is able to work as a project management tool.
• The second feature that every good defect tracking tool must have is a simple and intuitive interface. If the interface of the application is too complex, your developers can hardly get used to it within a short period of time. Moreover, they may even ignore the application if it is too complex. That is why the interface of your defect tracking tool must be intuitive. Otherwise, there is no point in using it. Luckily most modern bug tracking applications have quite simple interfaces.