10 Critical Elements of a Bug:
Day #6

The Status field shows the current state of a bug (see A Software Bug: The Life and Times for more detail). A bug begins in an Active state (“Active” or “Open”) and is assigned to the appropriate party for Prioritization.

The bug remains in this Active state until it is fixed. Once Engineering implements a fix for the bug, the status is changed to a Resolved state (“Fixed” or “Resolved – Fixed” or “Fixed\Not Verified”) and is assigned to QA to test.

After testing the fix, if QA determines that the bug has not actually been fixed, they change the bug back to the Active state and assign it back to Engineering to attempt another fix.

Once a bug has been verified as Fixed, QA changes the Status to a Verified State and Closes the bug. Once Closed, if a bug is found to have been re-introduced, it is Re-Opened with the Status being changed to an Active state or to “Re-Opened” (depending on the company) and assigned to Engineering.

Element #9:
Status

• Active Status:
  When you first enter a bug, it is an “Active” state. It remains in this state until its Status is changed to “Resolved” (Engineering has implemented code that is believed to fix the bug) or “Deferred” (when the fix for the bug has been scheduled for a later release).
• Common terms for Active Status bugs:
• Open
• Active
• Unresolved
• Resolved Status:
  When Engineering implements a fix, they change the bug’s Status to Resolved and assign it to QA for verification of the fix.
• Common terms for Resolved Status bugs:
• Resolved
• Resolved – Not Verified
• Resolved – Implemented
• Resolved – Will Not Fix
• Fixed
• Fixed – Not Verified
• Verified Status:
  Once QA has tested the implemented fix and is certain that the bug is no longer occurring, QA changes the bug’s Status to Verified and then they can Close the bug.
• Common terms for Verified Status bugs:
• Verified
• Fixed – Verified
• Implemented – Verified
• Closed Status:
  Once a bug has been verified as fixed and no longer occurring, the bug’s Status should be changed to Closed by QA. The bug will no longer appear when searching for “Open” or “Active” issues.
• Common terms for Closed Status bugs:
• Closed
• Deferred Status:
  If the decision is made to not address a bug in the current release, the Producer or Project Manager will change the Status to Deferred. At this point, the bug will not be considered a part of the current release. These bugs should be addressed during the planning phase of the next release to determine whether they will be fixed, deferred to a later release, or not fixed at all.
• Common terms for Deferred Status bugs:
• Deferred
• Known Shippable
• TBD (this stands for “To Be Determined”)
• Re-Activated Status:
  When testing, if QA encounters a bug that was previously Closed, they change the bug’s Status to a Re-Activated state.
• Common terms for Re-Activated Status bugs:
• Re-Activated
• Re-Opened
• Active
• Reoccurs
• By Design Status:
  If it is determined that a logged bug is not truly a bug at all but is a feature that is behaving as expected, the bug’s Status is changed to a By Design state by the Producer or Project Manager. This occurs because either the documentation was incomplete or missing, the behavior was not documented in the specs, the tests built based on the provided documentation are incorrect or inaccurate, or because the tester did not clearly understand the desired behavior.
• Common terms for By Design Status bugs:
• By Design
• Not a Bug
• As Designed
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