Defect Identification & Management Practices in Software Development - Part1

This research item is one of two that look at the defect identification and management practices in software development.

A defect is behaviour that is in some way unintended in a software product – the visible evidence of a mistake made somewhere in the development process, perhaps a requirement stated incorrectly (or left out), a design that overlooked how something should be done, or a coding error.

Almost all software development approaches incorporate processes for tracking, recording, measuring and resolving defects.

The intent of this research item is to identify the team organisation/structure approaches and defect identification & tracking practices without explicitly ranking their effectiveness against one another – once we have a picture of which techniques and practices are in use in real world development teams we will drill deeper to identify the effectiveness of the different techniques in use.

This first research item looks at the structure of QA/test teams in organisations and the way defects are reported & recorded.

The second item will look at how defects are addressed and tracked.

Team organisation/structure and defect recording

Topics to Rank

• Quality part of development team
• Independent quality team
• Independent quality and test team
• Quality and CM combined
• Assign unique defect ID
• Record date identified
• Record iteration found
• Record iteration resolved
• Record release found
• Record defect type (requirements, design, code, test)
• Record defect priority
• Record defect urgency
• Record defect category (logic, data, etc.)