Week 11 (Bug Testing) ~ FREE Template 🗒️
Hello friends,
Welcome back to my #SwottingAsABusinessAnalyst series. Read my previous post here.
If you're new here, explore the initial post of my journey 'Swotting' as a budding Business Analyst.
In Week #11, I was first introduced to ‘bug bash”. I took part in the ‘bug bash’ meeting where we do testing on the design together as a team.
Here are my takeaways :
As a business analyst (BA), I learned that it is important for me to be kept informed and seeing the progress of what being built by the designers and engineering. BA is usually the one who runs the bug bash in my team.
During the bug bash, designers and engineers show us what they've built, and we make sure everything matches our plans. This part of the process is called Quality Assurance.
One important thing in this process is regular demos. We usually do this at every sprint or whenever the team has something new to share, like in a demo meeting or daily stand-up.
What is bug bash?
If you're new to software, think of a 'bug bash' as a group checkup for the website. We all get together to find and fix any problems before the website goes live.
Purpose of the bug bash :
Find bugs
Flags anything that does’t make sense to the design
Why bug bash is important?
Bug bashes help us catch any problems early so we can fix them before users see them. It's like making sure a car runs smoothly before taking it for a drive.
It can be either about how the website looks (UI bugs) or how users interact with it (UX bugs). For example, a UI bug might be a button that looks weird, while a UX bug could be a form that doesn't work right.
Things to avoid during bug bash :
Breaking experience (for both UI and UX)
Shipping a poor quality experience
How to run a bug bash?
Running a bug bash for a website page involves several steps to ensure thorough testing and effective bug reporting. Before we learn what is the step-by-step basic guide, below are the terms you need to be familiar with :
Terms to know :
Blockers / Bugs : Any bugs that must be fixed before launch (Bugs that is stopping us from pushing it to production)
Goal : Clear objective of what we want to achieve during the bug bash (e.g this includes areas of checking and inputs that may comply to rules and regulations etc)
Testing URL : This is the testing links that you can click to start run the testing. It can be directly on the web or an app (either Android/ iOS) ~ all these depending on scenarios
Table of issues : This is where you can document all the issues experience. In a simplest way, you can document the issues in a table. In my team, we use Trello.com to document the testing reports which also used to show progress flow of our bug bash. Regardless of the report format, key important items that needs to be in the format will include :
Description (what is the issue when running the test)
Reporter (who is reporting this issue)
Type (what is the type of the bugs e.g design, user experience (UX) etc)
Ticket (Link this issue to a report ticket that may be on your project management tools. e.g JIRA, Trello etc)
Running a bug bash for a website page involves a few steps:
Plan the bug bash meeting : Decide what we'll check and when.
Set-up the bug bash meeting : Invite everyone who needs to be there, like developers, testers, designers, and product managers.
Prepare Test Environment : Make sure the website is set up for testing. Ensure that the website is accessible in a test environment that mirrors the production environment as closely as possible.
Provide testing instructions : Give everyone a list of things to check and how to report any problems. Refer to my sample of template on Trello (my team use Trello.com to manage bug bash); other team may have use other alternatives to document their bugs such as Excel Doc, Word Doc, Confluence page
Conduct testing : During the bug bash, we all test the website together and report any issues we find.
Prioritize and Address Issues : Afterward, we prioritize the issues and fix them.
Document the feedback : Finally, we test everything again to make sure it's all working.
Here is a video that explains Bug Bash (from a lens of a designer ~ some team, bug bash can be organised by designers too.
In my team, we manage and run bug bash using Trello.com. Please find my Bug Bash template here (Click to download)
Till next time friends, and good luck for your first / next bug bash! And remember, “everything is workable!”
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You can also explore my other blog post on Agile Delivery, Project Solutions, Agile Mindset and Career Bits on WorkWizard. Leave me a comment, would love to hear if we are on the same wavelength!
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