How do you perform root cause analysis and prioritize defects for resolution?

RCA is always useful in terms of saving time and effort in any project. It can be done at any stage of development to avoid mistakes in future. If we found that poor documentation and continuous updates on requirements is source of major defects then necessary actions can be made to save testing and development efforts. Formal review meeting can be conducted to come up with best testing processes as well.

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a process of identifying the underlying causes of problems in order to prevent them from happening again. It is a systematic approach to problem-solving that involves gathering data, analyzing the data, and identifying the root causes of the problem. RCA is important because it helps organizations to: Identify the root causes of problems: RCA helps organizations to go beyond the symptoms of a problem and identify the underlying causes. This is important because it allows organizations to take steps to prevent the problem from happening again.

Root Cause Analysis is one of the essential measures in testing and validation mechanism which helps identify and analyse the possible cause of issue or parameters that could possibly contribute to issues or defects in future. RCA drill down happens as part of Post production or Defect control mechanism meetings with stakeholders from all related teams being the party such as development, testing, support etc.

RCA is a great problem solving technique for troubleshooting the real cause of a defect to avoid any reoccurence. Triages can be done involving test, development and business to ensure the method followed like fish bone diagram, or priority severity metric is reviewed by everyone and a standard documentation must be built. In UAT the testers might not be same or at same experience and redundancy can occur.So, RCA definitely helps in implementing a best practice ensuring quality deliverable

Using the third party tools/library might cause the failure. Beside file a ticket to the third party to ask them fix the bug, we should prepare the work around to handle the third party bugs

Whats the point of prioritising taks if we ignore the impact of the defect on users and business. So prority should always be given to bugs that negatively impact the basic user flow and bugs that are business critical.

It's important to prioritize defects in the order of severity: what is causing operations-stopping bottlenecks? What is blocking the pipeline? What is causing the software to outright fail and terminate operating? These scenarios should be prioritized first, alongside any security concerns, because the failure caused by either can have catastrophic effects for developer-side testing, as well as end-user experience and risk of PII leaks.

Consider the mechanism that the defect is reported. A defect found by an experienced QA at system testing will be presented in a certain fashion. A user who has a lack of confidence in the application and is conducting UAT is likely to prioritise differently. Understand the perspective on defects and allow that to help inform the RCA.

The comment on differing perspectives is interesting. All defects logged can be directed into triage for assessment by a tester / qa / ba to ensure that adequate steps to reproduce are present and also to review against existing issues to ensure that no duplications are introduced. Another important step is to validate that the issue is actually new and part of the active development. Defects can be found that are actually present in the live release, especially when working in functional areas that see low traffic volumes or where users have just accepted the behaviour as intended.