Simplification of bug report data:-

The sequence of actions that are applied on the software to reproduce the defect or bug, actually defines the way to get to the problem. A tester may detect a number of bugs during the testing session, however, if he or she skips even a single step which is important to generate the bug while preparing the bug report, then it would not be possible for the developer to reproduce that defect.

You have to assume that every detail of the testing session is relevant unless it is proved that a scenario comprising simple or less no of steps is sufficient to reproduce the defect. The main objective of simplifying bug reports is to rule out all the irrelevant steps that have the least role in reproducing the bug.

The following actions are applied on different test elements, such as procedures, input data, configuration and platform, to simplify a bug report:-

1- The number of procedures capable of reproducing the problem or defect can be minimized by shortening the step by step interaction with the system.
2- Input data is a data set that serves as input to a program, such as command -line argument, a text field in a graphical user interface (GUI), a file, or a data base. We can reduce the input data set to the smallest data set that is capable of reproducing the problem.
3- In case you cannot reproduce the problem the way the s/w is configured out-of-the-box, find the few crucial settings that are necessary for reproducing the problem.This implies that you can select the options that are different from the default configuration to reproduce the bug.
4- While performing testing , you may need to find out whether the problem is reproducible on all the operating system and hardware combinations that are supported by the application or not. However, many defects are not platform specific, and testing on the other platform can sometimes be difficult. Therefore, we usually do not use this action for simplification purpose.
5- Other test elements, such as the browser type an internet speed should also be considered for simplifying bug reports because these elements might vary from one system to another and cause the defect to manifest on some systems, but not on others.