How to track defects in Test Director?

A software system or application cannot be considered productive and useful if it is full of defects. Hence, it becomes quite essential that all the defects present in the software system or application are located and repaired appropriately during the development process.

The end users, testers and developers can submit the defects that are detected during all the phases of the testing process. The test director helps incredibly in the submission of the defects detected in the software and tracking of them till they are well repaired. 

Life-cycle of a Defect

- Whenever a defect is submitted to the test director project, there are certain stages through which the defects are tracked namely:

1. New
2. Open
3. Fixed
4. Closed

- Once a defect is fixed, the tester can either reject it or reopen it. 

- At the initial stage of reporting the defect to the test director, the status that is assigned to the defect is ‘new’ by default. 

- The defect is reviewed by either a quality assurance or a project manager and it is determined whether or not the defect is to be considered for repair. 

- If the defect is not considered for repair i.e., if it is rejected the status ‘rejected’ is assigned to it. 

- If the opposite case is there i.e., if the defect is accepted for repair it is assigned a repair priority by the project manager or quality assurance and the status ‘open’ is assigned to it. 

- This defect is now assigned to one of the members of the development team for repair. 

- The developer repairs the defect and then the status ‘fixed’ is assigned to it. 

- The software system or application is then retested, thus ensuring that there is no occurrence of the defect again. 

- Even if in case the defect recurs, it is again assigned a new status ‘reopened’ by the quality assurance or project manager. 

- But if the defect gets properly repaired the status ‘closed’ is assigned to it by any of the two managers. 

- The test director also provides the option of adding some new defects to an existing test director project. 

- All information and data regarding the defects found within a software system or application is handled by the defects module of the test director.

- The following are the defects that are undertaken by the defects module of the test director:

1. Creation of the defects.
2. Editing of the defects.
3. Linking defects to each other.

Stages of Defect Tracking Process

The following stages are involved in the defects process:

1. Adding of the defects
2. Reviewing of the new defects
3. Repairing open defects
4. Testing of new build
5. Analyzation of the defect data

- In the first stage of the defect tracking process, the new defects detected in the software system or application are reported. 

- In the next stage, the new defects are put through a review process and the defects to be fixed are determined. 

- In the third stage, the defects are corrected by the developers who have been assigned to do the task.

- In the fourth stage, the new build of the application is tested and this process is continued until and unless all the defects are repaired. 

- The last stage of the defect tracking process witnesses the generation of the reports so as to provide some assistance to the developers for the analyzation of the progress of repairing the defects. 

- Also, in this stage, the date of release of the software system or application is determined. 

- Later, it is determined whether to cancel the rejected defects or take action on them further. 

- The following productivity tools assist the process:

1. Views
2. Filters
3. Sort
4. Manage columns
5. Favorites