Do Software companies deliberately ship products with bugs?

Almost all of the software companies ships their products with a known bug list. It is important to understand what forces these companies are forced to follow this practice on regular basis. Also most of the companies have their own defined criteria to determine which bugs they can defer and deliver with the product release. Some of the possible criteria can be:

1. Bugs which are low severity and low priority

2. Bugs that may not cause any business impact

3. Bugs which have some level of workaround possible

4. Bugs which are existing (since old release) in the product

5. Bugs which are not high Priority and requires high level of efforts to fix them

These are some of the reasons that may allow some of the bugs to be deferred for a release. For any organization it is very important to determine good enough testing. Testing is good enough (This is also referred as Test Stop Criteria) if:

1. Requirements are correct and each of them are covered with at least one test scenario

2. All required functional and non-functional test scenarios are identified and are executed

3. All logical paths and conditions are exercised

4. All failed requirements are revalidated with respective regression test

5. All Identified issues planned for fix are fixed and validated

It is important to think on how as a tester you can help, contribute and voice over these areas and help improve quality within your Team and line of business:

1. Determine appropriate test strategy that maximizes the probability of finding defect

2. Try to build a Bug Deferral Criteria with your LOB, BU or product suite teams that is agreed upon by all stakeholders

3. If a defect is logged then try your best that the defect is fixed. you may not be able to do alone yourself, so use mechanisms like status reports, escalation and proper communication involving your superiors

4. If a bug is marked as deferred analyze if the bug not severe and has possible workaround. If you suspect that this bug can raise concerns from customers or decreases competitiveness in the market then raise your voice and escalate immediately. I'm sure if the alarm is genuine then it will be heard out

5. Ensure that the possible workaround is published in appropriate customer facing documents e.g. release notes, user guides, online help etc

6. Identify the means on how you can minimize the number of backlog issues. You will certainly need support from your superior and management for this.

7. Become game changers and identify measures on how you can contribute your best.