How to Prepare Better Test Report.

Preparing issue or bug report is a part of software testing life cycle and is an important task for a software tester. Hence preparing issue or bug report in a better way will show the ability of a software tester. I hope this post will help you to prepare a better bug report.

I had used a specific format for reporting and tracking bugs which you can see in the spread sheet (excel) below.
Tested the following URL (labs.9lessons.info) and reported issues to Srinivas Tamada (developer).

Author

Suresh Natarajan
Test Engineer & Freelance Tester
Chennai, INDIA

Email : n.sure04[at]gmail.com

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The following spread sheet (excel) consists of two sheets with names Login and Login Screen Shots.

Note: For better understanding of the report click and view both sheets in the spread sheet(excel) first and then go for the explanation provided.Also don't forget to view comments inserted accross the cells in Login sheet

Issue ID – Should be a unique ID.
Check Item – Which page or module tested (i.e. Login Page in this case)
URL – URL of the page tested (in this case labs.9lessons.info)
Issue Description – Explanation of the issue found
Issue Type – It can be Functional or UI issue
Priority – It can be Low, Medium or high based on which the developer has to fix
Severity – It can be major, minor and moderate which tells how well it will product Product or project
Status – It can be in open, fixed, reopen, deferred or closed.
Tested By – Tester name will come here (In this case Suresh N is the tester name)
Tested Date – Date when the tester tested will come here (In this case Suresh N tested on date (17-07-2011)
Fixed By – Name of developer who fixed the issue (in this case Srinivas)
Fixed Date - Date when the developer fixed will come here (In this case Srinivas is the developer fixed those issues on (18-07-2011)
Closed Date – Date which the tester has checked the fixed issues and closed the issues (In this case Suresh N tested the fixed issues and closed it on 18-07-2011)
Suggestions – Developer or tester can give any comment about the issue.

Screen Shots of the issues found should be captured and displayed in this sheet with corresponding issue number .when the developer could not clearly understand from the issue description these screen shots will clearly explain them.

Useful Resources

Fire shot plug-in
It is an excellent tool to capture screen shots which is available for IE, Chrome, and Firebox browsers .It can be downloaded from the following link
Download Link

IE Tester
IE Tester consists of all versions of IE. Through which UI and Functionality testing can be done. It is an application will you can download from the following link
Download Link

Adobe Browser Lab
It is an awesome tool for cross browser testing. It consists of latest and old versions of various browsers through which UI related issues can be tested. It can be downloaded from the following link. browserlab.adobe.com

Mezer Tools
Used to measure exact height, width and gap space through calipers provided in this tool. This tool also has option for capturing screen shots. It can be downloaded from the following link
Download link