The only exhaustive testing there is is so much testing that the tester is exhausted. - William C. Hetzel
I have just read a short article, Don’t Use Bug Counts to Measure Testers by Cem Kaner.
The last paragraph:
If you really need a simple number to use to rank your testers, use a random number generator. It is fairer than bug counting, it probably creates less political infighting, and it might be more accurate.
Brian Marick mentioned it at agile-testing@yahoogroups.com.
From time to time I have to forward our bug severity scale to a customer responsible for reporting bugs.
We use only the first five. I do not remember when I reported a bug with severity six or seven.
1. Showstopper - blocks development and/or testing work, production could not run
2. Critical - crashes, loss of data, major memory leaks
3. Major - major loss of function
4. Minor - minor loss of function; other problem where easy workaround exists
5. Trivial - cosmetic issue like typo, misaligned images, and similar
6. Fix if time - super-low priority
7. Don’t Fix
I have been recommending this articles from FogBugz Online Documentation to our customers (to improve their bug reporting skills):
From wiki.mozilla.org
- Pretend you’re writing a bug - it’s pretty much the same
- Assume that the person following your test case only has basic familiarity with the product. For example:
- “Bring up the New Calendar Wizard” - This is too vague.
- “Launch the New Calendar Dialog (by either double clicking calendar list, File->New Calendar or right clicking calendar list).” - This is much better.
- Be fairly specific with the expected results
- “It worked” - Once again, too vague.
- “The event was created on the proper day; The event had the proper color” - This is great.
- Keep list of steps and expected results as simple as possible.
- You don’t need to detail every click unless it’s an important part of the testcase.
- Click on the name text box; enter a name. Click on Color drop down, pick red.– This is a little much
- Give the calendar a name, assign it a color. –This is much better.
Christopher McMahon mentioned this at agile-testing@yahoogroups.com.
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