4 Common Reasons Why QA Miss Software Defects

Last updated on October 15th, 2022 at 07:20 pm

Imagine a situation where you have completed a development project and it has gone through all stages of the QA testing process. You release it on its due date and return the next day to find that there are several bugs reported by users. It would be so frustrating to see all efforts of your QA teams going down the drain. We know that quality assurance is an important part of an app’s development lifecycle, however, it can never ensure that it will be 100% free from issues/bugs. Bugs and issues tend to escape from a QA process and reach to the final release, even after frequent and thorough QA testing. QA teams are equipped with defect tracking to ensure quality and bug-free apps, yet they may fail at achieving their objectives with respect to quality assurance. 

Test Suites Wear Out Over the Passage of time

When the same tests are run a couple of times, they no longer remain effective. This introduces a number of bugs in the system that are unable to be detected by these tests and ultimately reach the end-users.

Ideally, QA should never assume that they can build an ultimate test suit that will successfully detect bugs in all software apps. QA should keep track of the product changes and update the test suite from time to time. 

QA Teams have Less Time to Test all Test Cases 

In the era of rapid software development, software testing teams are under pressure and limited time constraints to meet their objectives. Even if they are careful in selecting the right options, they would still be in a rush, due to which they tend to overlook defects. Testers should prioritize testing processes and focus on key business functionality. They should make sure they share with their managers/stakeholders what they can test and what they cannot. It is also important to share all the risks associated with their testing efforts and it can be done via defect tracking tools. 

Skipping Some Important Defects 

Often, there are times when defects and bugs are right in front of our eyes but they are not visible. QA testers miss them because they often overlook issues while looking at the app under testing when using the issue tracking tools.  However, this problem can be resolved by paying attention to details. Testers should make sure they think like an actual user right from the beginning of interacting with the application. 

No Proper Documentation for Requirements 

At certain times, testers do not have properly documented user requirements during the earlier stages of projects. If user documentation does not cover all usage scenarios, testers may not be able to cover these scenarios while testing. Thus, it is important that the required documentation and test cases are clear, complete, and cover all the user scenarios. This will also allow testers to meet the user requirements and ensure that the defects are rectified.

Conclusion

It can be quite annoying for QA teams to miss out on software bugs, while there are many reasons behind it. Let’s have a look at 6 common reasons why they fail to do so and also discuss some solutions that can help testers resolve the problems and ensure that these situations may be avoided in the future.