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Time spent on investigating a bug that was not a bug after all

Last post 02:52 pm January 13, 2020 by René Gysenbergs
3 replies
Bayan Aloqleh
11:23 am January 7, 2020

Hello, I am a scrum master and I have a question regarding adding bugs that turn out to be not bugs after all.

I have a case where a QA reported a bug and the developer spent time investigating the issue, it turned out that this was not a bug so, the QA decided to remove the bug (as they found out it was not a bug after all) but the developer spent time checking it.

How can we log the time spent by the developer? is removing the bug the right thing to do? or shall we keep it and keep the investigation task?

Ian Mitchell
05:25 pm January 7, 2020

How can we log the time spent by the developer? is removing the bug the right thing to do? or shall we keep it and keep the investigation task?

What are you actually trying to achieve? My advice would be to focus on improving the team's understanding of what Done means.

Daniel Wilhite
07:27 pm January 7, 2020

Why do you need to log anything? Scrum isn't a time tracking tool. It is a tool to aid a team to understand and solve complex needs for a product. If your company requires time tracking then the people responsible for that requirement are the only ones that can answer this question.  

But if I were forced into this situation I'd consider this.  Did the QA and Developer spend time that leads to better understanding of the product?  Sounds like refinement to me. 

René Gysenbergs
02:52 pm January 13, 2020

Hello Bayan,



There are three options:

1) The 'bug' is found during the development before the DoD had been reached:

    - The time of investigation is considered part of the complete development track of the user story

2) The 'bug' is found after the development had been closed, but within the same Sprint:

    - User story has been re-opened and the time of investigation is considered part of the complete development track

3) The 'bug' is found in an increment of a previous Sprint:

    - The 'bug' is opened in the Sprint as a new bug, time of investigation is added and bug should be closed as 'fixed'

    - Add in the bug description that it wasn't a 'bug'.



Just see that this becomes a learning experience between the developer and the tester AND not becomes a point of irritation overtime. We're all only people and people make mistakes.

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