How to Reproduce a Non Reproducible Bug

In our day-to-day life we all have various tasks to complete. Some of them are easy and the remaining is counted as Challenges. A software defect once found should be reproducible so that the tester can report with conviction, developer can fix with ease and the Quality Assurance (QA) team can close with confidence.

Being a software tester, we also face some challenges, such as Non-Reproducible bugs. Bugs which are not easy or cannot be reproduced again are termed as Non-Reproducible bugs which we often find harder to isolate and to get them fix becomes a difficult task.

A software tester should provide Steps to Reproduce a Bug to make the Developer task easy and to not to affect the deliveries of Software Product.

It’s difficult for the Developers to resolve such bugs and testers used to get lot of objections for such bugs.

Sometime it may spoil the relationships between testers and developers. But how to handle Non-Reproducible bugs is the concern of the Time.

There are various terms to reduce the number of non-reproducible defects to a minimum.

How do deal with Non Reproducible Issues:

Software Testers need to improve their skills in order to how reproduce such issues.

Below we share our experience to handle these kinds of situations:a) A software Tester should try to capture the story around the issue and not just steps.

b) We should try to capture the complete Test Environment.

c) Always capture the possible Test Execution Results that should contain the test data, screen shots of issues, the applications logs, Device logs, Server machine logs.

d) A tester need to more patient while working on such issues.

How do deal with Non Reproducible Issues:e) Maintain the test data and modify as per the client test inputs or adjust to reproduce the bug.

f) Always add the test steps that get the execution closer to the bug.

g) The observation skills on the application behavior under the test should be sharp.

h) Discuss the issue with your team mates and development team and try to reproduce them on Debugging mode.

i) If a Software Tester has to perform exploratory testing then there should be awareness of all the configurations as well as system set-ups.

It is essential to have detailed and properly explained 'Steps to reproduce' in which the bug occurred to reproduce a bug.

If a bug has stopped Reappearing at the client side, you can mark the bug as “unreproducible” in your defect tracking tool. Try to reproduce the issue to determine the occurrence of defect and avoid reporting on the basis of single time occurrence of the bug.

Always, keep in mind the severity and priority of non-reproducible issues and spend the time and resources according to the need.

A software Tester should be updated with new trends and forums about various types of issues and their occurrences. It will help in differentiating and Reproducing of system specific, browser specific, product specific, external issues, etc.

BugRaptors is a QA and Software Testing Firm. We provide manual and automated performance testing service for software, web and mobile applications.