Ambiguous phrases in Testing

Ola, Iā€™m grateful for that detailed explanation!
Also in my experience are the details of risks, severity and hazard, way to seldom discussed. (Iā€™ more used to probability and impact).

I had with ā€˜ambiguousā€™ more the concept of ā€˜multiple concepts under the same phrase or different phrases for the same conceptā€™ in mind. Therefore at first I did not got your direction.

Iā€™m sadly not surprised to see that important topics are not sufficiently discussed in our industry. :cry:

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Bug.
We get a bug raised via helpdesk. Someone looks at the steps to reproduce and says the customer was using the software wrong, ā€˜user errorā€™ not bug. Someone else says the steps to reproduce are possible to carry out, so it is a bug. Someone else says it is an issue, but the way of resolving it involves new functionality so itā€™s an improvement. Or that the behaviour only goes against an implicit requirement, so it needs an improvement making that requirement explicit, but someone else says that it should be obvious so itā€™s a bug still. And then the developers get involved and start debating whether the software was ever developed to specifically address the behaviour or just happened to cover it as a consequence of other workā€¦

Thereā€™s a lot going on behind the scenes when people talk about bugs, and I think there would be benefit in classifying different types, eg regressions, incorrectly carried out requirements, behaviour that is not what a reasonable user would want/expect, necessary improvements to current features to avoid problemsā€¦ I need to think about it more, but in the meantime the different ideas people have when they talk about bugs is wasting a lot of time and causing a lot of confusion, at my company at least.

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I often play devils advocate when it comes to the word bug. For me it can go by so many different names, and thatā€™s why as testers, language is a super important tool that we need to learn how to wield like a gigantic orc smashing battle axe, and at other times like a dagger to the heart of a specific communication error. My favorite is to use ā€œundocumented featureā€ when covering any non-regression bug during triages.

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