BUGLIFECYCLE

What is a Bug?Bug can be defined as the abnormal behaviour of the software.A fault in the program which causes the program to perform in an unintended manner. 

Bug Life Cycle:

In software development process, the bug has a life cycle. The bug should go through the life cycle to be closed. A specific life cycle ensures that the process is standardized. The bug attains different states in the life cycle. The life cycle of the bug can be shown diagrammatically as follows:

New: When the bug is posted for the first time, its state will be “NEW”. This means that the bug is not yet approved.
 

Open: After a tester has posted a bug, the lead approves that the bug is genuine and he/she changes the state as “OPEN”. This also means that the
development team has acknowledged the bug. 

Fixed (Resolved): Once the developer fixes the bug, he has to change the status as Fixed and assign the bug to the testing team for retesting. Developer must also provide what kind of resolution he has done to fix the bug. 

Retested: Once the bug is fixed, the tester retests the bug in the subsequent build or in a hot-fix. If the bug is not present in the software, he sets the status to “Retested”.  

Closed: When the bug is successfully retested and the bug is not found any more, usually the test lead or manager closes the bug. This state means that the bug is fixed, retested and approve and no more exists.

Apart from the above regular stage/status codes, there are additional codes used to exactly position the bug's status. 

Reopened: If the bug still exists during retesting even after the bug is fixed by the developer, the tester changes the status to “Reopened”. The bug traverses the life cycle once again.Reopen is on the same line with Open.

Deferred: This means the bug is expected to be fixed in next releases and not immediately. The reasons for changing the bug to this state have many factors. Some of them are priority of the bug may be low, lack of time for the release or the bug may not have major effect on the software. 
  

Rejected: If the developer feels that the bug is not genuine, he rejects the bug. 

Closed-Duplicate:If the bug is already logged by same tester or another tester in a different context, this can happen. so every tester must do a simple search in the bug tracking system whether a similar bug exists or not.

Closed-Irreproducible: Sometimes, the bug may happen due to a strange environment or data problem. The development team may not be able to exactly reproduce the bug and hence they cannot fix the same. In such a case, the bug may land up in this stage.