The Ultimate Bug Bash Testing Guide | How to Run a Bug Bash

What’s a Bug Bash?

Bug Bash is a test activity that is performed by multiple individuals simultaneously. The test process may contain people from the same group of people from different teams with interest.  Bug bush is a team or a business event where many bugs/errors are identified in the shortest time duration. It includes developers, QA teams, marketers, testers, the UX team, designers, and management. Usually, the bug bash process occurs in vast shared rooms, and even individuals who discover more bugs will get rewarded.

What Are the Benefits of Bug Bashes?

Discover Unearthed Errors

Bug Bashes are an excellent solution for uncovering bugs in any segment of product or service.  During Bug bash, within an hour, the product is examined for errors or bugs by more than 30+ talented individuals, including QA tester, designer, product manager, and more.

People having more knowledge about the product are involved, and they test them on the demanding user flow to uncommon user cases.

Offers Opportunity To Learn About the Product Internally

Another advantage is it provides an opportunity for the in-house team to the product ultimately. The team will be working and expertized on a specific part of the product development. It would be a change for internal team members to get familiar with other product or service segments.

It is an extraordinary chance for teams from various departments to utilize and get comfortable with other group members on their recent work.

High-Priority Bugs Can Be Identified In The Early Stage

At the time of sprint, the products get the production quality.  The Bash provides buffer time for the software developers to examine the critical bugs before the spirit completes

Bug bashes offer the chance to recognize the critical errors early, eliminating the later distress and down lines.

Reinforced Relationships Across Teams

Bug Bash is the place camaraderie among different teams is developed, and it brings the entire product group with a healthy competition.

Staging Environment Replicates The Production Environment

The staging environment provides interaction among the various users. And you can also perform the load testing of your application at this time. These tests are complicated to perform individually by the developers.

Cultivate Teamwork And Ownership Culture

Bug bashes help to build ownership over the application development. In this process, the software developer presents their work, and other engineers provide their valuable feedback to achieve the goal and assure the product's quality.

When Should You Run A Bug Bash?

Bug Bash must be run before the product relates to identifying and resolving the critical and showing stopper errors on the products. For example, this can be executed before the beta testing, and Bash will help you figure out the critical bugs and fix them before the product reaches the customer.

Bug Bash doesn't help you identify all the product issues, but it helps root out critical problems.  This vital step enables the developer to provide a flawless product and improve your client experience.

How To Run A Successful Bug Bash

Bug bash is simple if you plan them right. Since you probably won't have coordinated one yet. In this part of the article, you can get to know how to run the Bug Bash more successfully with a minimal resource from the following steps.

Step 1: Create A Place To Perform Bug Bush & Set A Date

The first step and the foremost in organizing your bug bash is setting a date and getting a space to occupy all the individuals who participate. It looks trivial, but it is essential to identify all team availability in the business.

This will enhance your quality of testing as there are many individuals to identify the product's errors, and as discussed earlier, this also improves team-building.

Before you begin the test process, you need the  following in the room:

Don't utilize the space where the testers are uncomfortable. Try to have ample space with good ventilation. The test environment has to be a little bit fun-filled and eventually has to complete the test.

You can share the testing summaries & bug tracking software results with a large audience with a projector's help. Ensure that the test room has a projector.

Create the test environment as relaxed and comfortable as possible.  Ensure there are necessary power plugs and network connection facilities that large groups of people can use.  Provide a comfortable place for the testers.

Step 2: Assign The Roles And Responsibilities

Bug bash includes many players, so before starting the test process, make sure who is responsible for each. Every individual in the testing process has to be sure about their bug bash roles before the testing begins.

Invitees: As the name would imply. Invitees are the testing folks, and it can be anyone from any team who is involved in the product development. The engineering team and the project management team are responsible for what has to be tested. The event is purely for the product's quality tests, and there is no space for the features or product requirements on the discussion. So employ the more familiar people with the product and trim down the least aware of the product attendees.

Stager: The primary responsibility of the person is to create the testing environment.  Stager is accountable for physical infrastructure, testing devices,  servers, databases, and the necessary software are installed for the testing.  A person who has domain knowledge will be a good fit for this role. It would be the developers.

Bug Master: The bug master is the person who conducts the bug bash event. This individual is responsible for setting the test team, scenarios of the testing. And they have to ensure that the tester are focused and involved in identifying the bugs

Notetaker: Notetaker is the person who is responsible for collecting the information regarding errors, and they have to prove the insights about how the bugs occur, the place of errors such as situation, discovering trends, patterns, and the nature of the various bugs and more.

This individual should be extremely coordinative, who can handle the stressful situation suitable for this role.

Multiple testers would be a good fit for the note-taking role for the perfect bug bash. The note-taker has to be flexible for both macro and micro approaches.

Step 3: Send invites to the Invitees.

Everyone is receiving lots of emails and notifications. So there would be the chance of missing the invites. The bug bash invite has to be unique, and it has to stand out from the hundreds of inbox emails. There is no compulsory that all the invited individuals have to participate.

Today Everyone is receiving lots of emails and notifications. So there would be the chance of missing the bug bash invites. The bug bash invite has to be unique, and it has to stand out from the hundreds of inbox emails. It is not compulsory that all the invited individuals have to participate.  Here are some tips to make your email stand out from the crowd.

• The first invitation has to be shared three weeks earlier to the event.
• The invites have to be sent out through  C-level staff like a chief executive officer (CEO), chief financial officer (CFO), chief operating officer (COO), and chief information officer (CIO), etc.
• After the 1st invite is sent, a follow-up or reminder email has to share one week before the event.
• Inform that the winner of the event will receive rewards
• Make sure the invitees to respond either accept or decline never provide may be options

Step 4: Making The Teams For Bug Bash

This step is the most significant part of organizing the bug bash. Along with the tester, create a mix of individuals from various departments that will produce an opportunity to know them better. The team member's collaboration relies on the size of the tester pool and the test scenarios.

A group of 3 to 4 members works excellent. Everyone on the team will get involved in the testing process. In contrast, the large group will lack participation among individuals. If feasible, plan for minor groups and have at least three team members. Once the participants arrived, convey to them the numbers in a sheet i.e., which team they belong to at the meeting venue. Make sure that there is a designated table with testing devices already set up (along with the table number so that the participants can reach the designated place for them more quickly)

Small Team (2–4 individuals)

Connect the diverse roles of people together. For instance, combine the stager, note-taker, and include the bug master if possible. Boost leadership skills among the team members

Medium  Sized Team (5 – 15 individuals)

Include the Bug Master on the team members. The bug master will make the team focused on the bug findings. We suggest doing regular check-ups while the bug bashes and conducts formal acceptance reviews.  

Before running a bug bash, ensure your product manager's and engineer's availability. If not, it is beneficial, then postpone the bug bashing.

Large Team (16 – 40 Peoples)

While handling a large team for bug bash, Be ready with a support team to clarify the participant's queries when testing and funnel them to the exact groups. This large group testing is stable at the time of internal beta testing of your product.

Step 5: Plan For A Testing Scenarios

As you have planned, the team is developing the test scenario. The Test scenario defines the functionality that has to be tested. The test scenarios are also known to be test possibilities or test conditions. As a quality assurance tester, you need to put yourself in the user perspective and find real-world scenarios.

The reason why we need to build Test Scenarios?

• The test scenario provides entire test coverage.
• Business analyst, developers, approves the test scenarios to make sure the product is tested thoroughly. It is to ensure the product works under common scenarios.
• They serve as a quick tool to determine the testing work effort and accordingly create a proposal for the client or organize the workforce.
• It serves as a guideline to discover the testing's effort, and further, based on this, you can prepare a proposal for the client or your business.
• It helps in the further study of the end-to-end functionality of the product.

Limit one test scenario for a maximum of 45min; try to have 15 min break between each test possibility. The ideal test possibilities or scenarios should have the following.

• Have a clear and short title
• Provide a detailed description to the user and what they need to test
• Include all the mandatory test steps
• Set the goal of the testing
• Share the scalability

Share the test scenario with the help of a projector to reach a large audience simultaneously.

Establish A Bug Reporting System & Format

Utilize the bug management tools like Jira, BugReporting, Asana, and more to track and manage the errors identified during the test.

The ideal bug report should contain the following information

Bug ID - The defect id for each error has to be a unique

Bug Description - The description should be in detail, it should comprise of the bug encouraged location, etc.

Version - Environment details like App version, OS, Browser, device, etc.

Steps - Share the Complete steps, including screenshots and videos. It would be helpful for the developer to recreate the bug

Date Bug identified- The error identified date has to be provided in this section

Reference or Media Attachment- In the bug report, share the reference document like screenshots, documents, and more.

Detected By - Mention the Name/ID of the tester who identified the bug during the test process.

Status of the Bug - The position of the bug-like in progress, review, completed.

Fixed by - Mention the name or id of the employee who resolved the particular error.

Closer Date - In this section shows the date of error fixed.

Severity  - This section shows the impact of the bug on the product or application.

Priority -  This session shows the bug priority. Whether it is a critical error or low priority errors. The severity priority can be marked as low, medium, high, etc.

To gather the above detail, it will be complex for non-technical individuals.  So moving for an error reporting solution will be beneficial.

Error Reporting With BugReporting Software

• The user can easily share the error on the face by recording and annotating them with their voice and can attach the required document without switching the application.
• This feature takes the bug reporting to the next level to quickly describe the error they face by recording the screen and explaining the bug. It is real-time information, and it is easier for the developer to recreate and identify all the environmental details like OS, device, location of the bug, etc.
• With minimal people, you can perform  Bug Bash more effective way. The bug detected can be recorded shared with the relevant team. So the tracking of each bug will be easier and comfortable.

• With the BugReporting tool's help, you can manage a large database of the bug and filter and view the bug process status. Once the error is fixed, it will send an auto-notification to the individual who raised the error tickets.
• There is no need for code or chrome extension to install the software to your application. Just copy-pasting the BugReporting magical code is enough to integrate with your application. There is no need for code knowledge. Even non-technical users can quickly install and can begin identifying the errors on the application.
• Bug reporting has to be easy for all the technical and non-technical individuals is important for us, instead of the developer moving front and back, viewing the emails, chats, codes to resolve the error. It is the most convenient way all the user information on the dashboard. With the entire bug recordings, user attached documents, and additional information on the comments section
• You can easily link the relevant bugs using the BugReporting tool and can easily track whether a similar error has already occurred.
• The tracking of the bug process is simple and the product manager can view and prioritize the errors.
• BugReporting provides more powerful integrations with popular project management tools. So the bug can be assigned directly to the project management tool.
• Bug Reporting solution focuses on minimizing any copy-pasting or everyday work you have to do in moving recordings from Bug Reporting to your favorite tool.
• You can easily manage all the projects and all your team members in a single place. Bug reporting doesn’t have any limits for the projects. Your organization can manage multiple projects, and there is no need to jump to slack, email you can perform everything from the BugReporting dashboard itself.
• Sign up today with BugReporting and make your bug bash more successful.

Step 6: It's Time To Find The Bugs –  Bug Bash

All the preparation works are completed. It is time to hunt the errors on the application or products. Make the bug bash motivated and optimize the results.

1. At the beginning of the bug bash

• Exhibit how a bug bash works
• Share the roles and responsibilities of the team members.
• Explain the testing process and share the bug reporting template format.
• Inform about the awards or rewards.

2. Before testing starts:

• Manifest the testing scenario individually
• Set the countdown for bug hunting (30-45 min)
• Don't perform bug hunting for more than 45 min.
• Display the count down that is visible to everyone in the room.
• Help out the tester with their queries while testing

3. After testing completed

• Provide 15 min break before stat testing the next scenario.
• After the break, announce who is leading the bug hunting in these test scenarios.

Repeat the steps based on the number of testing scenarios.

Final Thoughts

After your team identifies the critical error on the product. It's time to reward the individual who has performed best and identified the maximum number of bugs. Next day of the bug bash event, connect with every individual who has participated in the event and get their feedback about the bug bash and identify the key areas of improvement.  Implement those suggestions on the subsequent bug bash events. This feedback will help you improve your testing event and help you be more successful next time.

You can organize and perform an efficient bug bash from the above six steps and support BugReporting software.