First
of all, it is not a good thing on part of tester if he/she miss the
Software bug, as we know how much important Testing is in Software
development life cycle, but there are times when testers miss the bug.
Though it is not done purposely as no tester want to leave the Software
bug undetected and unreported.
There can be many reasons which can lead to miss of Software bug by a tester. Some of them are as below:
Improper Requirements
The
requirement documentation is not up to the mark or adequate. As a
result of which test cases prepared may not be proper, resulting in
missing of many scenarios. It is quite important that test cases
prepared should be clear and complete, with total coverage of requirement documentation.
There are chances that requirement is not fully clear to QA persons or
developer, leading to wrong testing and miss of Software bug.
Not Sufficient Testing Time
Poor
strategy or insufficient time planned for testing sometimes lead to low
time availability for the testers to test the application before
release. Whatever is the reason for low time availability for the
tester, it can lead to inadequate testing of the application, which can
ultimately lead to missing of a bug by the tester.
Repetitive Testing misses Software Bug
It
usually happens that testers have to do testing for same test case
again and again. In such cases, due to repetitive testing, tester become
irritated and tired and also sometimes leave the test case untested,
assuming that it was running fine earlier. Though we are talking from a
Psychological perspective, but it is fact that running the same test
case, again and again, reduces the efficiency of a tester and makes them
less productive.
Incomplete Regression Testing
During
Regression testing, it is very difficult to find related Software bugs,
sometimes an application is so large that tester is unaware of the
other area of the application which is affected by fixing a bug in one
place. Also, if there are many bugs in a module, then it happens that
some of the bugs are detected by Tester but some related bugs are
missed.
Domain Knowledge of Application
It
is quite important for the tester to have domain knowledge of the
subject for comprehensive testing. Lack of domain knowledge plays an
important role in missing of a Software bug. Whatever is the reason for a
lack of domain knowledge, whether it is a lack of time or lack of motivation of tester,
it increases the chance of inadequate testing. Also, it can lead the
tester to be influenced by the developer, who has developed the
application, who can misinterpret the requirement to tester so as to
prevent the issue from being reported to the developer for fixing.
Low Project Budget for Testing
Small
testing budget and small team size hamper the quality of the
application. With the development of the project, more testers required.
Due to the cost factor, the limited testing resource has to do more
testing, ultimately leading to compromise in the quality of the
application. Though most of the issues are fixed but there are chances
of few bugs being missed out. This factor especially makes an impact
when there is less time for testing before release.
Frequent requirement Changes
Last
minute requirement changes put too much pressure on developer and
tester, this not only limits the time but also the probability of
missing out defect by Software tester and also developer is more prone
to create mistakes in such tight deadlines. Many times it happens that
changes in the code or UI is done 2-3 days before release and gets
released to production without getting noticed
Incapability of Automation Scripts
Sometimes
more reliability on automation testing also lead to missing of defect
as manual tester start depending more on Automation testing which lacks
human experience and intuition. For Automation to succeed required good management and experienced testers.
Incapable Management
Organizational
factor sometimes plays an important role. Lack of motivation in a
testing team also plays an important role. Sometimes tester does not get
enough recognition and are ignored in the organization because they
feel Anyone can do Software Testing.
Sometimes testers get less salary as compared to developers. There may
be another organizational factor as well which hampers the productivity
of testing resource. The bad relationship between testing team members
and Test Manager or bad relationship between Testing team and
development team make the situation worse.
No Proper Test Plan
Lack
of Proper testing process also hampers the productivity. For example,
proper Software bug tracking tool should be there, so as to track the
status of the Software bug. It sometimes happens that old Software bug
is lost after new Software bug is found. Proper configuration and
release management process should be there.
Human Nature
Last
but not the least, a human can also create mistakes. Sometimes tester
is not able to reproduce issue which gets found during ad-hoc testing.
The tester cannot be in alert condition all the time.
Overall,
we can say that though it is not a good thing if the issue is missed by
a tester and is detected by the client or end user. It not only
diminishes the image of the testing team but impacts to the quality of
the application because it is the QA/Tester who is responsible for
ensuring the delivery of quality product to the client. On the other
hand, it is also not fair to blame tester for the error occurring once
in blue moon.
