Have you ever been in a situation where your product has a production bug, and everyone starts questioning the work of QA? If so, you're not alone. It's tempting to point fingers, but that culture rarely leads to real improvement.
We must always remember that quality is everyone's responsibility, not just QA's. When dealing with production bugs, we often have to involve multiple people from different roles to understand and solve the problems effectively.
In this article, we'll explore how to transform an environment that typically blames QA for production issues into one where production bugs become learning opportunities for all.
The first thing you need to do when a production bug arises is… Don't panic!
If everyone starts blaming you or your team's QA, don't get defensive. Instead, take a deep breath, stay calm, and start documenting everything you think is relevant to the bug.
For example, you could note any associated ticket numbers, along with the history of conducted test results, and communicate the outcomes. This will help you recall and gain more context about the feature that causes bugs.
You could also contact your release or delivery manager and suggest bringing together the necessary people, whether they're QA Engineers, Product Managers, Scrum Masters, Developers, DevOps, or others familiar with the issue, to gather more data about the bug. Getting input from various stakeholders is important because all data points matter, as they will be valuable information for further analysis.
This initiative to collect data together is significant because it creates an atmosphere where everyone is on the same page before pursuing a deeper investigation.
This data-gathering process should provide transparency around information such as:
Depending on the urgency, the team can decide whether to discuss the root cause and seek potential temporary and permanent fixes in the same meeting as data gathering or schedule another meeting to discuss in-depth root cause analysis (RCA).
It's always easier to play the blame game. However, to make improvements, we need to normalize root cause analysis (RCA), meaning we strive to understand the root cause of the issue rather than finding out who caused it
It's a mentality of continuous improvement rather than blaming. Pointing fingers will not make the organization better, even if it is indeed that person who caused it. It causes people to be defensive about issues that might occur in the future, making the situation worse.
A key success factor in conducting a good RCA forum is making everyone comfortable expressing what they know honestly and admitting what they could have done better.
But remember, the focus is not "who" but "why."
Having a forum where everyone is transparent can unlock the potential for RCA to find the real cause, fix the issue permanently, and prevent it from happening again in the future.
Besides fixing the current issue, it's also an excellent opportunity for the organization to evaluate processes and identify areas needing improvement.
Sometimes, issues don't necessarily result from incorrect execution (e.g., missed tests) but from flawed processes. Therefore, the ultimate goal should be establishing safeguards and processes that prevent similar incidents from happening again.
Here are a couple of things you could learn from RCA and use to prevent future situations and improve your processes:
This part is critical but often overlooked.
Production bugs and root cause findings are valuable for organizations. If not communicated, the learning only benefits those in the RCA meeting. Here's how to make RCA more impactful:
By consistently sharing incidents, communicating findings, and celebrating improvements, you foster a more transparent culture. It can change how people react to production issues from "Who messed up?" to "Okay, let's work to prevent this from happening again."
This example illustrates how a team could come together using RCA to deduce a bug in production that was caused by a seemingly small oversight.
Imagine your team just launched a new feature for an e-commerce platform. Suddenly, customers can't add items to their shopping carts!
Here's how your team could come together for RCA:
It turns out a developer made a last-minute database change directly in production to "optimize a query." This wasn't in the official release, and it inadvertently broke the "add to cart" function.
By learning from this incident, the team avoids repeating the same mistake, ultimately strengthening the product.
Don't look at production bugs as a reflection of your QA competence. Instead, consider them organization-wide opportunities for improvement.
You can contribute to your team by guiding them toward structured processes that ultimately help everyone deliver a more robust product. The end result? Fewer emergencies, stronger collaboration, and higher-quality releases.
So, the next time a production bug pops up, don't shy away. Step in, say, "Let's find the root cause as a team," and use it as a springboard for better quality engineering.