The most common mistakes in bug reports: how to create a bug report that gets read on the first time

A bug report is a communication tool between QA, developers, and managers. Its quality, consistency, and completeness determine how quickly and effectively an issue will be fixed.

The most frequent failures in bug reports that slow down the team’s work:

• Lack of clear steps to reproduce the bug. Without this, the developer wastes time on “guesswork”

• Lack of up-to-date screenshots, videos, logs, or other supporting materials

• Incorrectly described system behavior: it is unclear what is happening and what the correct result should be for this scenario

• Lack of information about the platform, version, settings, and test environment

To avoid these problems:

• Add up-to-date screenshots, videos, logs, and other important details

• Make all bug reports consistent: use a similar structure and format for each report, especially for the Summary

• Write the Summary clearly, following the “What? Where? When?” principle, briefly and without unnecessary filler, focusing on the essence of the defect

High-quality bug reports help the team quickly analyze issues, set priorities, and effectively fix defects, saving time and resources.