What are the Types of Bugs and Errors that Occur in the Software Testing Process?

Often an intricate and meticulous process is given to the enterprise software development testing team. Despite different competencies, a team, with substantial collaboration, makes the end product successful.

Software testers, developers, and project managers are the decision-makers that allocate roles & responsibilities and assurance for task completion in a given time frame. But, a potential vulnerability, such as a bug can disturb the entire geographic as well as the planning of the team.

Software QA services often involve people with distinct perspectives and abilities to test and identify different types of bugs. There has been various research on how collaboration must be maintained between the team of software developers, managers, and testers.

Before moving towards understanding the types of bugs occurring in software it is essential to understand the true definition of a bug.

In a testing process, identifying defects is often termed as “error”. The error is a mistake, that result and reflects in coding. A bug is thereby caused by the error found in the developmental ecosystem. An error or a bug can result in poor performance or crash of a program completely.

But, how was an error given the name of a bug?

History says, in 1945 during the testing of the Mark II, the machine suddenly stopped. The machine had a three inches moth, which was located and picked by the operator in between the relay contact. This moth was then affixed to the logbook and there was the origin of the metaphor ‘bug’.

A bug is more difficult to deal with, than an error. The best method to identify and resolve bugs is by outsourcing software testing services. From the early days of testing, programming languages have revolutionized to prevent as many problems as possible.

In order to detect a bug faster and prioritize its fixing, software companies have started classifying bugs as per their nature and severity.

Types of Bugs and Errors Classified By Nature

1. Compatibility Error

Instability in the performance of specific hardware, software, operating system, browser when integrating with different software or operating systems can result in a compatible defect. This division of bugs can be procured through compatibility testing. Network configuration is another aspect that can bring incompatibility errors. For instance, an upgrade in the Android version may result in a change of content alignment, scroll bar, & more.

2. Performance Error

As a part of product engineering, a performance testing methodology ensures substantial response time, speed, and consistency in consumption of resources for adequate functionality and performance of a software. When any error or delay occurs, it is counted as a performance defect. Performance error or defect also results in poor user experience and loss of business.

3. Operational Error

The intractable behavior of software with functional or operational requirements leads to this kind of error. This again turns into poor user experience, as when a user is looking for a product and the software or application does not respond with the desired result. This type of bug can easily be found through functional testing and can be overcome by resolving it ASAP.

4. Security Error

The potential weakness that can possibly affect the entire system or software is the loophole on the security layer. Defects in the security layers are tested through rigorous security testing to highlight the susceptibility to SQL injections, buffer overflows, weak authentication, encryption errors, logical errors in role-based access, and XSS vulnerabilities.

5. Usability Error

The most futile defect is the inconvenience of using the app. A user would immediately abandon the software or application when it is not easy to use, have a difficult content layout, struggle to signup with numerous fill-ins, and have a complex navigation system. Test engineers through effective and different types of software testing can identify potential errors in software against usability requirements and validate them as per requirements.

6. Syntactic Error

Syntactic errors refer to grammatical or incorrect sentence formation. During testing a software’s GUI, an analyst may come across misspelled words that do deliver the meaning of action taking extra time to relate and understand them. Syntactic error is different from a syntax error. A syntax error occurs when the code is not written in its true format and requires the developer to fix the problem.

7. Incorrect Calculations

This division of bugs does not come with a single cause. Wrong calculation numbers can provoke major accidents leading to huge losses caused by data type mismatch, coding errors, incorrect algorithms, & more.

8. Communication Errors

A communication error is detected when the instructions and recommendations are not met as expected. For instance, the software may have an upgrade or a new feature added but may not be able to find it. Not receiving a reminder or an alert of a new feature is certainly a communication error.

9. Boundary Related Errors

Every text size, the number entered for the user is restricted to certain limits. Before deployment of the software, a developer needs to anticipate these factors beforehand to ensure no error later.

10. Missing Command Errors

A missing command error denotes an event that cannot be closed without performing certain or needful actions. Whether you wish to act or not, for instance, a popup may emerge and may not close due to the absence of a button or absence of a logical option.

11. Error Handling Errors

Error handling is when a user adds invalid information.  The information may also be misprinted or not clearly mentioned. In such cases, if the user does not receive a quick reminder or alert of the misprints, then it is an error, which should be taken care of to only have valid data.

Categorizing Bugs by the Level of Severity

An engineer has to participate in various tasks meanwhile working with a dedicated software development team. This mostly leads to confusion or failure to add a few requisites leading to error or bug formation. Through various testing methods, features such as product security and other errors can be detected and recovered. Also, with the help of these categories, the analyst can align the bugs as per the severity.

Here we have classified bugs in various levels in order to make it easy to prioritize as urgent or low-priority. Where urgent bugs require immediate attention and fixing within 24 hours and a low-priority do not require immediate attention thereby giving developers a substantial amount of time to fix them.

1. Critical Errors

This kind of criticality usually limits or even blocks the complete module’s functionality or system. This kind of defect restrains the testing from moving further without getting it fixed.

2. High-Severity Errors

This type affects the functioning of the application. This way the application affects the user experience strongly, such as an email provider may not be allowed to add another recipient.

3. Medium Severity

This may be stated as a minor fault in the functionality of the software, such as a broken link in a non-essential section.

4. Low-severity Errors

Errors, such as problems in the design of the software such as UI color or pattern may be the least of the priority to fix, stating it in the low-severity section.

QA testing services are specially crafted with sensible and reliable resources and strategies to keep track of bugs and resolve them in order to promote general requirements for the software.

5. Management of the Vulnerability

Many organizations follow three phases in order to have a bug discovered and choose the right method to remediate it.  With the assistance of a proper workflow, as well as performance management, software development process as well as testing team can be well assisted. The platform also allows peer-to-peer communication, manage, review, and inspect the schedules of project meetings, and more.

6. Strategic Decision Making

In order to have a successful bug fixing, the first step is to assign the right strategy and correct resources to align as well as what consideration needs to be taken for security testing.

7. Vulnerability Discovery

After picking the right resources and strategies, the discovery phase identifies the loopholes. All teams are given different roles and responsibilities as well as timelines. The end result decides which team is suitable for which category so as to retain the expected result.

8. Vulnerability Remediation

Here the team decides a way to fix the bug. Depending on the severity of the bug and timeframe, the team mitigates the potential risk emerged. With the help of a systematic approach, qa software testing services can prove effective while consolidating with other teams for clear communications and success at the end.

In a Nutshell

Software testing and QA services are essential aspects for the software development companies to not just identify vulnerabilities, but security, functional, usability, performance, compatibility, and other related errors. Undergoing a strategic pipeline assures complete remediation of the bug step by step – by discovering the root cause, assigning the right team, and collaborating with them for utilizing the right remediation methodology while prioritizing the bugs as per the severity and priority.

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