Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Preview
Start a free Courses trial
to watch this video
As developers and testers, one of the terms we hear regularly are “defects” or, more commonly, “bugs” in the software. Generally speaking a defect is any flaw in the intended use of the software.
Definitions:
- Defect/Bug: A flaw in the software that must be fixed.
- Workflow: How a user moves and interacts through the system.
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
[MUSIC]
0:00
Welcome back.
0:04
One thing we hear about
often as developers and
0:06
testers alike are defects, or
more commonly bugs, in the software.
0:08
What are they, though?
0:14
Generally speaking, a defect is any flaw
in the intended use of the software,
0:16
even if the intended use isn't
formally written down somewhere.
0:21
So some easy defects to think of here
0:25
are when I click a button all I see is
a blank page, or maybe even a 404 error.
0:28
Another would be when I
click Submit on a form but
0:34
I haven't filled out the form yet,
so the page is sent anyway.
0:37
In our RSVP app,
we have a defect like that.
0:41
Typing someone's name in
the Invite Someone field and
0:45
clicking Submit adds them in.
0:48
So let's add that person right now.
0:51
Some new person.
0:53
Great, so that added a new card there.
0:56
But when you click Submit without
typing anything in the name field,
0:59
it adds a blank card below.
1:03
I'd expect to get some sort of error
from the page before that happens.
1:05
There really isn't a point in adding
a blank card like that, after all.
1:09
The user has a certain workflow when
they're moving through the application.
1:14
A workflow is how a user moves through and
interacts with the system.
1:19
So in our example, instead of typing in
a name before clicking the Submit button,
1:23
the user went straight to
clicking the Submit button.
1:28
The user's workflow in this
defect was to load the page and
1:31
then click on Submit before
doing anything else.
1:35
In this example, we did, in fact, list
this particular workflow in our test case.
1:39
And we expected to get some kinda
error message from the website.
1:45
Since the software didn't match our
expectations for this workflow,
1:49
we would write up a bug.
1:52
More on that in the next video.
1:54
But first, I wanna talk about
subjectiveness with bugs.
1:57
Remember that there can still be
a defect or flaw in the software
2:00
even if the specifications aren't
written down for a particular workflow.
2:04
So this is an example of another
thing that I think is a problem.
2:08
So I'm gonna add one more name
to the bottom of this list.
2:12
And as you can see,
that name gets added to a new row, but
2:17
it also takes up the entire row, and
it doesn't quite look right to me.
2:21
Is it a bug?
2:26
I'm not really sure.
2:27
I'm going to create a bug report for
it just to be on the safe side.
2:28
Later on, though, after telling my team
about it, they report that this is simply
2:32
how flexbox works on the front end and
that it was never a requirement
2:37
to make the box the same size as
all the other boxes on the screen.
2:41
But I insist that this is a defect
2:46
because it doesn't match the style
of the other boxes at all.
2:48
I asked the product manager about it, and
2:53
they do agree with me that it doesn't
look correct and it needs to be fixed.
2:55
So on some defects,
a consensus needs to be made.
3:00
Sometimes technical reasons keep defects
in the software because it would be
3:04
too difficult to fix them given the
current amount of people on the team or
3:08
whatever other priorities they have.
3:13
Sometimes defects are glaring
even if we never spent
3:16
any time thinking about these scenarios
when we designed the product.
3:19
That's all okay, and
it's part of the reason you're here.
3:24
You need to use that intuition to
find problems and report them.
3:28
In our next video, we'll go through
how to write up a bug report so
3:32
that developers can fix these problems.
3:36
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up