This post was most recently updated on June 17th, 2019
What is a bug or defect life cycle in software testing?
Bug or defect life cycle is journey of bug through and fro from various states till it will get fixed properly and closed by tester. The flow or stages of bug life cycle vary from company to company. It can also depends upon time available for testing according to which it can be altered.
Stages of bug/defect life cycle –
- New – The bug found by tester and logged in defect tracking tool for first time then the status of the bug will be “New”.
- Accepted/Rejected– When new bug logged by tester it will assign to development team lead or developer and he/she will decide whether the raised bug is valid or not. If bug is invalid it will get rejected straight away and though it is valid team lead decides whether it is to be considered for current release or not.
- Active– If the bug to be considered in current release that will become active and developer starts working on it.
- Deferred- If bug is not to be considered in current release it will mark as deferred and that bug’s life cycle ends there for that release.
- Fixed- Developer do the necessary changes in code to resolve the bug and do the unit testing to confirm whether the bug is fixed and changes are not affecting any other module.
- Deploy- After all corrections made in code the same will get deployed on UAT for testing purpose.
- Retest – Deployed code will get retested by tester at UAT level to check whether the bug is fixed or not. If the bug is fixed then tester will close the bug or else he will reopen the same with his comment and finding while testing
- Closed – The retested bug which is resolved and not impacting on any other module will get confirmed by tester and he/she will close the bug where bug life cycle terminates.
The diagrammatic presentation of bug life cycle is shown below:-
