Top 10 common mistakes while reporting a bug

Only those who do nothing do not make mistakes. However, our students do a lot in the process of studying a new professional field. Doing the task, listeners are learning on their own and on others' mistakes. In this article, we collected the most common bug-report mistakes made by students . We hope this article will help you to understand better what to avoid and how to write a clear and complete  the bug description.

1. «The page isn’t working», «Authorization works incorrectly», «Nothing happens after clicking the button»

If the goal is to describe the bug in an uninformative and unclear way – this description is the way to go. It is unclear from the described above what exactly is incorrect about the authorization process or what should happen after clicking the button. This is one of the biggest mistakes while describing the defect. It is necessary to clearly specify what exactly is the bug.

2. The summary and results are not described according to the «What? Where When?» principle 

To a lot of listeners it can appear to be complicated and unnecessary to follow this rule for the bug-report description. But this principle helps to briefly and fully describe the defect, where it happens and under which circumstances. This principle – is a common rule, algorithm of describing the defect. Usually, absence of any of the parts (What?, Where? Or When?) makes the description less informative.

3. «The text is shown the mistakes», «The page doesn’t open»

In bug-reports summary, description and results are usually described in Present Simple Passive Voice because in bug-reports it is more important what is happening with the object rather than who is performing the action. If the student isn’t familiar with the Passive Voice, he needs to learn the rules on his own using internet-resources or other sources. One of the most common students’ mistakes – the wrong order of the passive voice sentence («The button isn’t opened the page»). It is important to understand in detail how to make passive voice so it is used correctly.

4. The description of  two different bugs in one bug-report and duplicates

One bug-report should describe only one defect. The summary shouldn’t combine description of two defects or consist of two separate sentences. But also, the bug-reports shouldn’t be duplicated: if the same defect occurs in different places or with different elements it should be noted in additional information.

5. Unnecessary information in steps to reproduce

Steps to reproduce should describe only the actions and their order that will lead to the reproduction of the bug, and after fixing the bug – will allow to check that it’s not reproduced. Don’t add unnecessary information  such as describing the bug in the last step. Last step should draw attention to the place, block, page etc. where the bug is reproduced. It will help to find the bug faster, even before opening the screenshot or video.

Also, often the links to the other sites pages are added, which shouldn’t be done. The link address can change. Instead of direct links the names of the pages and steps to reach them should be added, and in the first step – the link to the main domain of the tested web-site.

6. Absence of one or several bug-report attributes

Bug-report has some mandatory attributes. Their absence makes it uninformative. The defect will be unclear without a summary, how we can reproduce the bug – without steps, what behavior is expected after specific action – without expected result. And, of course, it can’t be proved that the bug was reproduced without a screenshot or video.

7. Absence of the additional information

It is a very serious and common mistake. Bug can be reproduced only under specific circumstances  such as specific browser and its version, screen resolution, operating system etc. For example, in one browser version the bug can be reproduced but not in the other one. To reproduce and fix the defect, it is extremely important to know in which browser version, in which operating system etc, the bug was detected.

8. Incomplete sentence

It is another one common grammar mistake. The subject and predicate should be used to correctly frame the sentence while describing the defect. You can’t write: «No mandatory fields designations in the form». It would be grammatically correct to write it this way: «The designations of the mandatory fields aren’t displayed in the form».

9. Unnecessary elements on the screenshot (video), absence of necessary ones

Screenshot or video should display the complete visible part of the page in the browser with the address bar. In case of the screenshot – the red rectangle an arrow should point to the place with the defect. Absence of those elements or presence of unnecessary ones, that are drawing attention to them (bookmarks bar, tabs, desktop area etc), is a mistake.

10. Spelling errors in bug-reports

Bug-report is a documentation as much as any other and should be made correctly. Big spelling mistakes can be an obstacle in understanding the bug described in the report. It is necessary to review the written text and monitor the literacy of it. Special spell checking online-services can be used for that purpose.

Having read this list and followed the advice, it is possible to write a good bug-report that will be understood after the first reading and won’t need any further clarification.  Correctly written bug-report will allow to increase the chances of the successful and productive learning experience on the course and  reduce the time on communications and speeding up fixing of the bug on real projects as well.