Test Management and Defect Management
Test management contributions
Though the test manager owns planning and control, the test analyst contributes to the test plan (approach, estimates, schedule input), monitors progress and coverage, and participates in test closure by archiving testware and lessons learned. Estimation may use expert judgment, ratio/proportion, Delphi or planning poker - know when each fits (e.g., Delphi for consensus without confrontation, planning poker for team estimates). Test approaches include analytical (e.g., risk-based), model-based, methodical, process-compliant, reactive, heuristic, consultative and regression-averse. Match the approach to the context rather than defaulting to one.
Defect management
A defect report needs an ID, summary, environment, steps to reproduce, expected vs actual result, severity, priority, status and reproducibility. Severity is the impact on the system, usually set by the tester; priority is the urgency of a fix, normally set by the business or at defect triage. The lifecycle is new → open → fixed → retest → closed, with rejected and deferred as alternatives. Triage meetings decide which defects to fix and when, and root cause analysis reduces recurrence.
Traps: confusing severity and priority; letting the tester set priority; failing to retest and regression-test a fix; and reporting blame instead of facts.
Worked example. A crash on login for every user is high severity and high priority. A typo in the footer is low severity and low priority. A crash in a rarely used admin report is high severity but low priority because few users hit it.
Rule of thumb: describe facts and reproducibility; let severity and priority be decided with business input.