Your First Bug Report

Finding a bug is half the job. The other half is communicating it so clearly that someone who has never seen the issue can reproduce it, understand its impact, and fix it. A great bug report saves hours of back-and-forth. A bad one wastes everyone's time.

What Makes a Good Bug Report

Think about it from the developer's perspective. They're working on a different feature, they get a bug ticket, and they need to:
1. Understand what's wrong
2. Reproduce the problem on their machine
3. Find the root cause
4. Fix it without breaking anything else

Every field in a bug report serves one of those goals.

The Template

Title: [Short, specific summary]
Severity: Critical / Major / Minor / Cosmetic
Steps to Reproduce:
  1. Go to...
  2. Click...
  3. Enter...
Expected Result: [What should happen]
Actual Result: [What actually happens]
Environment: [Browser, OS, version]
Evidence: [Screenshot, video, logs]

Field-by-Field Breakdown

Title: Be specific. "Login broken" is useless. "Login form accepts empty password and shows blank page" tells the developer exactly what to expect.

Severity: Be honest. Not every bug is critical. A typo on the About page is cosmetic. A payment processing error that charges users twice is critical. Crying wolf with severity burns your credibility.

Steps to Reproduce: The most important field. Write steps that a stranger could follow. Include specific data you used. "Enter a username" is vague. "Enter 'testuser@email.com' in the email field" is reproducible.

Expected vs. Actual: Side by side, these two fields instantly communicate the problem. "Expected: Error message appears. Actual: Page crashes with a 500 error."

Environment: Bugs are often browser- or OS-specific. Always include this.

Evidence: A screenshot is worth a thousand words. A screen recording is worth a thousand screenshots. Attach logs if you have them.

Exercise

You're testing a login page. You discover three issues:

1. The password field shows text in plain text (not masked with dots)
2. Submitting the form with all fields empty shows no error message — just a page refresh
3. The "Forgot Password" link goes to a 404 error page

Write a bug report for each issue. Use the template above. Think carefully about the severity of each one — which is most critical and why?

The key takeaway: A bug report that can't be reproduced is a bug report that won't be fixed. Write for the reader, not for yourself.