In a nutshell: Is your website or mobile app riddled with bugs, and you're not sure how to get things back on track? This guide covers: What causes bugs? and How can you prevent these bugs?
Is your website or mobile app riddled with bugs, and you’re at a loss as to how to get things back on track? Not a week goes by without a new glitch marring the user experience or holding back your sales. While it’s unrealistic to completely eliminate technical errors, bug prevention is now the most cost-effective way to ensure the long-term success of your business.
In this article, we explore the root causes of defects and cutting-edge techniques for transforming your quality management into a driver of productivity.
What causes bugs?
A button that doesn't work, a display error, a 404 error, a connection issue: glitches on websites or mobile apps can stem from a variety of causes. Starting with the human factor. After all, since web and mobile platforms are developed by humans, errors can happen. But here are some common causes that can lead to bugs:
>> Regressions:
Regressions occur whenever a change to the code affects the existing code. For example, when a new feature is implemented, if it disrupts the behavior of previously existing features, then a regression has occurred because a bug has been introduced.
But what are the reasons for a regression? It may be due to poor code architecture, poor error handling, a poor version control system, inadequate code review before merging, poor development practices (or no practices at all), or even teams working too independently of one another, so that the modules they are working on may impact one another.
>> A lack of testing:
Does testing mean doubting? Some would say yes, but they’d be pretty presumptuous. Because if the software or app hasn’t been thoroughly tested— from the very start of its development cycle all the way through to production (and even beyond, for that matter)—then there’s a very, very, very (you can never say “very” too many times) high probability that bugs will make their way into production. And do we really need to remind you once again of the impact a bug can have on an end user?
Note: Testing is good (even very, very, very good), but you still have to test properly. And that means, in particular , choosing the right tests to run and running them in the right place. In fact, this is one of the key principles of testing: tests reveal the presence of defects, but they do not prove their absence. That’s why it’s important to test thoroughly and in the right places, in order to identify the most critical bugs efficiently. Testing is the essential metric for measuring application quality.
>> A lack of communication:
Is a lack of communication the root of all the world’s problems? It’s quite possible, and one thing is certain: it causes a lot of issues. Because, as we all know, a lack of communication between teams leads to misunderstandings, assumptions, and confusion. And in the context of web or mobile development, the entire challenge of communication begins right at the requirements phase.
Specifications are used to describe the vision of the people who create them. For example, the business has a need, and the Product Owner will draft the specifications. Next, the developers implement the specifications, and then the testers test the resulting code. And if there are gaps in communication between these different people—if everyone isn’t communicating effectively to develop the product and each layer is siloed—this creates a tunnel effect that can lead to critical defects, and it’s the end user who ends up paying the price.
So how can we prevent these bugs?
We've already discussed a few tips for avoiding and minimizing bugs in a previous article—focusing particularly on quality—but there are also development techniques that can help prevent them.
>> TDD (Test-Driven Development):
Test-Driven Development is a development method that involves writing tests before writing code. But what else? Basically, you first write a test, run it, and then verify that the test fails, since the feature hasn’t been implemented yet. Next, you develop the feature and rerun the test until it passes, and so on.
Why does this method work against bugs? Because if tests are created even before the feature or product is developed, the likelihood that the feature or product will reach its end users without having been tested is significantly reduced. Furthermore, conducting tests on a regular basis allows bugs to be detected earlier and thus corrected before the product goes live.
Keep in mind, however, that TDD remains a highly focused unit testing approach, and this requires upfront work to define the tests, which can sometimes be difficult to implement in a time-sensitive project.
>> BDD (Behavior-Driven Development):
Unlike TDD, the Behavior-Driven Development(BDD) method encourages communication and collaboration among all project stakeholders (developers, quality engineers, sales representatives, testers, etc.). This ensures that the entire team shares a common understanding of how the application should behave. This is reflected, in particular, in tests written in a language that everyone can understand, before development of the feature or product begins. Thanks to this BDD method, it is possible to identify bugs early in the design phase and thus prevent them.
>> Continuous integration / Continuous testing:
Let’s start at the beginning. The CI approach—also known as Continuous Integration—is a method that involves integrating new code written by developers into an application’s source code as early and as frequently as possible (at least once a day) throughout the development cycle. Automated tests are run every time the source code is modified (hence “continuous testing”) to verify that no regressions have occurred and that new features are implemented correctly.
This ensures continuous monitoring throughout the application lifecycle and , in particular, helps ensure that all regressions are detected as soon as they occur. This saves a great deal of time and effort that would otherwise be spent, for example, tracking down the changes that caused the regression.
However, this requires a very significant investment in automating all types of tests (unit, integration, system, end-to-end, etc.).
>> Please note that these development techniques may not work for everyone. It depends on your team’s structure and dynamics, the project context, your testing strategy, and so on. Even with all these preventive measures, you’re not completely immune to missing a bug (there’s no such thing as a “zero-bug” system), but you shouldn’t let the most critical bugs—the ones with the greatest impact—slip through.
Conclusion
In short, to better manage bugs, we must first and foremost be able to detect them, which simply requires implementing test-driven approaches. However, as we mentioned earlier, it’s not enough to just test—we must test effectively, and that involves using test-driven documentation, particularly automated tests. But that will be the subject of a future article 😉
FAQ
What causes bugs?
A button that doesn't work, a display error, a 404 error, a connection issue: problems on websites or mobile apps can stem from a variety of causes. Starting with the human factor. After all, since web and mobile platforms are developed by humans, errors are bound to happen.
So how can we prevent these bugs?
We had already discussed a few tips for avoiding and minimizing bugs in a previous article—focusing particularly on quality—but there are also development techniques that can help prevent them.