Last updated on April 7th, 2024 at 10:25 am

Bug reporting is not a simple task. In order to ensure effective bug tracking, it is important to know more about bug reporting. Obviously, bugs, issues, or defects are a part of any software development lifecycle, and they can appear at any stage. However, agile teams follow a proactive approach and believe in detecting these bugs earlier and resolve them more efficiently. Thus, besides having issue tracking tools, anyone in the QA team needs to have a few essential skills that are mandatory for effective bug reporting. 

As we know QA experts, testers or bug reporters need to have certain skills to achieve quality. Let’s have a look at a few of them in this article:

Technical Skills is a Plus-Point 

As a QA expert, you are supported to check and test software products from various angles. It takes great development and technical skills to find bugs, record them, and provide a comprehensive description of how they can be reproducible. A QA expert should also be familiar with different programming languages that teams use to develop software products. This does not mean that you to be a developer but it would be helpful for you to have some understanding of the various technologies used to incorporate products.  

Exceptionally Sound Communication Skills

One of the major reasons why QA teams remain behind their schedules is due to poor communication. Not only does this waste their time but money as well. Development team may often astray from the right direction due to inappropriate terminology used in a meeting, or due to unclarified requirements. Thus, it is critical for a QA expert to have exceptionally sound communication skills in order to make an effective bug report. 

Being a Good Tester

Testing used to occur after the development stages in the traditional waterfall approach. However, in agile environments, testers are expected to test an application during the development stages, so that the issues and bugs can be timely dealt with. Therefore, it is compulsory for testers to have good testing skills and experience in writing different bug reports that can be reported using issue tracking tools. 

Having an Understanding of a Product from User’s Perspective

When QA experts know their end-users and their expectations from an application or system, they will be able to incorporate the requirements in their testing process more effectively. A professional QA expert should be able to extract information regarding their end-users and how they will interact with an application to find it interesting and worth buying. On the contrary, when a QA tester tries to understand a bug or issue from a user’s perspective, he will be able to report it in a better way. 

Great Analytical Skills

Bugs often cripple various parts of an application and finding them may not be an easy and simple task. QA tester needs to understand the issue in order to know what is really happening. If he fails to do so, his instructions regarding the bug will be vague and in return increase the costs. This is why testers need to have a certain level of curiosity while testing their applications. 

Being a bug reporter, QA testers need to spend a lot of time studying a product and learn everything about it. A tester should be able to dive deep into his product and analyze it from all aspects to make the most of the bug tracking efforts, so that they can be removed from the software products, leaving the end-users happy.

Conclusion 

The reason why QA processes have improved over time, and have gained so much popularity is that it is something that is in the middle of the software development matrix, where developers, testers, designers, product managers, users, and clients can be on the same page. QA testers work as a middle man between quality assurance principles and the developers. They are responsible for telling the developers to fix the detected bugs in their code. They also communicate with the product team and ensure they are on the right track to fix as many bugs as possible. Each developer may have his own agenda or work assigned to focus on, yet it is the QA expert who is supposed to ensure that their work is aligned and everyone knows what needs to be done. This is the only way QA teams can make the most of their efforts by using issue tracking tools to ensure product quality.