Definition of a Bug Bash

Bug Bash is a special meeting when different people from a product company get together to discuss a test of a new feature or an entire product in general. A good quality bug bash involves bringing together a variety of people from different product teams and even professions.

The point form of any bug bash depends on the context, size, and structure of the organization. Traditionally, it is a gathering of up to 15 people who work together for a while. Each of them has their device and spends time learning about a feature.

The bug bash procedure involves discussion on the part of:

• People who directly worked on feature development;
• Those who know nothing about it;
• People from various fields – testers, programmers, product engineers;
• A diverse set of people; employees with different genders, and social and cultural contexts.

How Can Bug Bash Be Useful?

Snow blindness

When a software team spends a lot of time studying the software, they can stop noticing the quirks and oddities of its performance. And there may be some very important bugs that won’t seem so obvious anymore, since the beta testing companies are used to seeing them.

Example: At the initial stage of a certain feature development, the team notices that the graphical interface of the software is a little broken. But there is a workaround that they continue to follow. Over time, they become so addicted to this workaround that they simply stop being aware of it. This way becomes the norm, and no one else notices the apparent problem. Thus, the team becomes “blind” to defects. With bug bash, employees with fresh eyes join the discussion of the bug and can notice if something has gone wrong.

Experience of Other Specialists

Each member of a product team has different experiences that directly affect their perception of a feature. Any association of such people can cause new bugs.

Example: we have started a bug bash to test the functionality of a shopping cart developed by the “internet user shopping cart” team. One of the participants belongs to a group that does not face the feature – he is from the group of participants who worked on the “payments” feature. The “payments” team is working on a completely different feature – the new web payment portal. A member of the “payments” team has experience interacting with the new portal. His experience will lead him to the corresponding tests. How does the new cart behave interacting with the new payment portal? But there is one important nuance: there may be some bugs. Moreover, no one from the cart team tested such a functionality.

Benefits of Bug Bash

Load Testing
A bug bash might be the first time several people have used a new feature simultaneously. In some cases, it can be used as a small load test for a developed product. When several people use some feature at the same time, really interesting things may happen.

Sharing of Information
Such meetings are a good way to get to know your colleagues better. The bug bash participant can test something that others haven’t noticed. This approach will help them learn something new and share experiences with others.

Teambuilding
Such interactions are also a good thing for product teams. One of the basic goals of bug bash is to connect people who wouldn’t normally work together anyway. By bringing them together during bug bash, you start making new team bounds.

Bringing to Light the Importance of Testing
Many participants of bug bash aren’t software testers. And this is a good chance to introduce some testing challenges to the product team. By knowing this, the team will be able to think more about testing while doing their usual work. It will be a great result if it encourages people to think more about testing and testability.

Conclusion

To sum up, it’s worth noting that bug bash is a good method to implement multi-level exploratory testing. Such events bring together employees from different teams and areas of activity. This reduces snow blindness and helps to benefit from the experiences and perspectives of many people.