How to start writing the steps of reproducing the defect (bug)?

Today, in terms of the «QA tips for newbies» rubric, we will talk about how to describe the steps to reproduce a defect(bug) correctly.

Basic rules for describing steps to reproduce a defect(bug) are the following:

Steps to reproduce (STR) are interconnected with the result, which is formed by their means (Actual result).

Steps for reproducing the defect are not formed in a free way, but according to a certain structure.

Generally, the structure of the steps' description looks like this:

If you need to open some page of the site that differs from the main page, it is recommended not to specify the full page link in the first step, but to mention in the steps the process of opening of the desired page step-by-step.

The reason for this is simple: the testing environment can often change, developers can change the location of the files on the web server and the link might become irrelevant.

For example, the address of the test version of the site may look like:
https://test.gameralliance.com
or
https://dev.gameralliance.com/

and then the link to the production version of the site in the first step can only confuse:

• a developer, who can start fixing the defect in the wrong environment;
• a junior tester, who will start checking the presence of a bug in the wrong environment and will return the defect for revision.

The environment must be specified in the «Environment» (Jira)
or «Additional information» (Mantis) fields as follows:

Registered or non-registered user

After a defect was found in the application / environment / website, after registering and logging in as a registered user, you should add the following information to step 2:

In this case, there is no need to specify the parameters of access to real accounts for the following reasons:

• the developer must have a number of test accounts on each environment;
• in 95% of cases, the defect is reproduced under different test accounts (very rarely access to one specific account is required);
• in 50% of cases the defect is reproduced for a registered user, but absent for a non-registered user.

Other points that affect the description of defect’s reproduction steps

Sometimes a number of conditions is needed for reproducing a defect(a certain set of test data must be created, the user must have special rights, the system must be brought into a certain state)

In this case, the first steps can be placed in the «Preconditions» block, for example:

Number of steps to reproduce

It is good practice to describe a sufficient number of steps to completely reproduce the defect. For each system or website under test, the number of items in the «Steps to reproduce» block may differ. 

In most cases, it’s necessary to adhere to the minimum/maximum limit: from 2-3 steps to 7-8 steps of defect reproduction.

If there are too many steps for reproduction, then in order to reduce the unnecessary description of simple actions, you can combine elementary actions in the first step. For example:

We hope that these rules will help you to describe defects in a better, faster and in the more professional manner. We recommend students of our online courses to read this information carefully, as it will be one of the reference points during homework checking and evaluation.