We at Testlio are all about quality and that is why we take issue reproduction very seriously. On the Testlio platform, all issues should be reproduced at least once before the issue gets approved. This helps us make sure that the reported issue is valid and isn’t a one-time phenomenon.
In other words, if you can’t reproduce an issue then it's most probably not fixable. It's important to not only find issues but also to provide necessary information so that it would be possible to effectively debug the feature of the application.
It is crucial to understand that the issue reproduction is as important as testing itself and that is why the whole team is counting on the volunteers who would take up the reproduction tasks. Team is everything!
Below we have listed three different ways as to how you can benefit from reproducing issues:
Become a Master of Writing Excellent Issue (Bug) Reports
Issue reproduction is a good opportunity to learn or polish your skills on how to write good and clean issue reports. A well-written and actionable issue report means that the issue report is written with just the right amount of information (E.g. for hardly-reproducible issues, the principle is still to include more data than less data) so that that the developer can easily understand the steps that lead to the issue and can fix it accordingly.
Get To Know the Application Under Test Inside and Out
When doing an issue reproduction, you will become somewhat of an investigator of the app. You will have the opportunity to use your creativity to explore the application in many different ways.
Learn From Others and Scale Up Your Skills
You can observe what kind of issues others are reporting, which helps you get to know different types of issues and their occurrences. You will be able to differentiate system, browser, and product-specific issues, as well as external issues.
Here Are Some Tips for Taking Up an Issue Reproduction Task:
Start early - Allocate enough time to go over all the issues within the deadline with some leeway for complex issues that might require more time than initially allocated.
Plan - Go over all allocated issues and try to assess priorities and already detect problematic issues (missing attachments, poorly written issue reports, duplicates).
Communicate - Don’t be shy and ask as many questions as needed from the Test Lead (Coordinator). If you can’t reproduce an issue, let the Test Lead (Coordinator) know as soon as possible.
Be open - It’s okay to take a few issues at a time. You can let the Test Lead (Coordinator) how many you are up for.
Time-tracking for issue reproduction
The time allocated for the issue reproduction varies from workspace to workspace. In simpler workspaces, it can be 0.1 h per issue, in more complex ones, it can be two or three times that, for instance. It is really important to track your time that you spend on the issue reproduction and to let us know later whether the allocated time was enough or not. Sometimes even a simple workspace might contain more complex flows to reproduce. Thus, if justified, we will approve the additional time as well.
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