How to Detect Bugs in Your App?

Committing errors in our individual lives is very common, and not correcting them can ruin our well-being and life. The same goes for the application. Therefore, any application, before its release, goes through a series of test cycles using test cases written based on requirements.

While web or mobile application testing or during test case execution, if a developer or tester did not get the desired result as per the requirement, or if any unexpected results occur, the application gets marked as bugged.

A bugged application can ruin its recognition and interrupt the end-user experience. So it is imperative for an application to be bug-free.

The first step in the process of addressing bugs is to identify them. Finding bugs in an application is critical, and a normal finished application is not possible without doing so. A lot of time and effort has been put into reducing bugs and minimizing the time to detect them. Without finding all the bugs, there is no way to know whether one’s energy is spent on fixing the important ones first or not. The faster a bug is found, the faster it can be reduced, leading to a lesser impact on the users.

Before getting started with ways to detect bugs, first, let’s understand what a bug is.

A bug is named differently in different organizations, such as issues, problems, faults, mistakes, errors, etc. Informally it is called a defect, which is described as an application or a feature that is failing to meet its expected results.

In user terms, a bug is any in-app experience perceived as inadequate, disruptive, or poor quality. It is a dissatisfying condition that blocks the user’s goal from being achieved.

Knowing about bugs, you might be thinking, why does this bug occur? Let’s discuss this in short before proceeding further.

The bugs occur when developers or testers make any mistake or error while developing the product. It includes the following-

• Wrong or improper implementation of code.
• The developer may have missed or not have developed the code for a particular feature.
• Extra feature coding has been done, which is not required according to the client’s requirements.

After knowing about a bug and its occurrence in any application, I guess now it will be easier for you to understand how to detect it. They are discussed below.

It does not really matter how talented the development team is; the bugs are inevitable. Trying to find out the hidden bugs in an application causes a powerful impact on the system.

Simply there are two initial steps to detect bugs in a workflow. First is External Reporting, that is, after the application is developed, finding out the defects from the user focus group that what exactly is not working correctly, and where to start fixing. The second is Internal Reporting which is before releasing a complete application,  running internal testing and examining each piece of code, and finding existing bugs and faults.

An application lifecycle has different stages, and in each stage, different kinds of bugs can be introduced and cause the application not to work as intended. During the progression stage, when the bug appears, implementing a new feature and fixing another bug becomes difficult by not breaking existing functionality.

So, you can follow these simple tips that will help you detect bugs earlier.

• Managing requirements can be practiced. It is done by writing all the requirements and tracking them as they progress from design to development, testing, and deployment stage.
• Before starting the test, understand the whole application and prepare a good test case that will include major risks of the application.
• Perform repeated tests with different test environments and compare the results.
• Analyze the current set of tests using previous test data patterns.

Including these initial tips, let’s find some more reliable ways to find out those bugs in your app.

Setting Goals For Application Quality

You will have a better idea of what bugs to look for when you know the standards to which the software needs to be held. Having a goal will help you in bug prioritization.  When there is a need to find bugs in an application, the best place for you to start is to understand what the application is expected to deliver in terms of user experience. Clarity on goals helps to test cases and scenarios accordingly because all functions and features need not require the same amount of focus. Start with the feature that affects or matters to the number of users.

Do your Research

As a tester, you need to be familiar with the application and have in-depth knowledge of the features of the application you are testing.  It becomes difficult to decide what constitutes a defect when it is unknown how a feature is supposed to work or how it is expected to behave.  Without having a complete understanding, you may find it challenging to find the defects. So it is important to study a particular feature and discuss its technical aspects being implemented with the developers.

While doing research, it is also important to focus on the customer’s viewpoint. That is, when wandering about the bugs in the app, it is also important to think about what a customer would expect out of the application.

Testing on Real Devices

Executing tests faster without compromising the accuracy of the results is hard to achieve without using real browsers and devices for testing. Real devices in the testing process are undeniable, and they must include not just the new devices but also older devices active in the market.

The more devices one can run tests on, the better it is. Since it is unpredictable to say on which device the application will be highly accessed. Without monitoring the application on real devices, it is impossible to say how an application’s multiple features perform on the real user end.

You can start running your manual as well as automated testing on real browsers and devices using platforms like LambdaTest. It offers a real device cloud of more than 3000 real browsers and devices with their respective versions.

LambdaTest allows you to run parallel tests on a Cloud Selenium Grid to get faster results without compromising its accuracy. In addition, you can use multiple features like geolocation testing, accessibility testing, real-time debugging, and more to uncover bugs and ensure that the user does not find them in the real world.

Investigating Test Infrastructure

Most of the time in the test cycle, testers have some time on hand before actually commencing testing. Having this time in hand should be invested to evaluate the test infrastructure. This is because sometimes the testers find that the defects are set up related, and these flaws lead to the emergence of bugs that are not caused by the application itself.

Another frustrating thing than dealing with the infrastructure is the defects that cannot be fixed from a code point of view. The actual source of the bug, when not identified immediately, leads to a situation where there is neither any test progress nor valid defects to identify, hence delaying the process. So to avoid these situations, reach out to investigate and stabilize the test environment as early as possible.

Using the Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle was put forth by Vilfredo Pareto. This principle states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. Implementing this principle in application testing practice translates to 80% of all bugs that can be found in 20% of program modules. But these ratios should not be taken seriously because bugs are not distributed equally throughout the application; instead, they tend to cluster in certain sections of the code.

This principle states sorting out bugs by cause and not effect. That is organizing bugs into categories by what causes them to occur instead of how they are caused. As developers create the application, they will understand its various components better. So to create new categories for bugs, it is better to communicate with them. Another thing is taking user feedback as it would be best to know the application’s most disruptive and error-prone areas.

Conclusion

From the above discussions, you must have learned the art of detecting bugs in your application. Following these will speed your testing process and make it more effective. So, try to implement the above-mentioned ways. This will help you develop the mindset needed for a high-quality application.