Cosmetic and Functional Bugs – What has to be Treated and How?

This article provides valuable insights into the significance of both Cosmetic and Functional Bugs and how they contribute to software quality.

There are always huge responsibilities imposed on the tester to uncover any kind of bug that software has. Irrespective of the functionality and user interface, testers can raise bugs wherever there is a non-conformance.

This article helps in understanding the importance of the Functional and the Cosmetic bugs. In this article, you can also find an understandable explanation of the factors to consider when prioritizing functional and cosmetic bugs, along with some live examples for illustrations.

Importance of Functional and Cosmetic Bugs

Bugs are inevitable in software development. Therefore, conducting comprehensive software testing is crucial before going live. Software testing can become more essential as it helps in identifying the bugs missed by the developers.

These unidentified bugs can become very costly in life. Hence, a proper test plan and testing have to be carried out to enhance the software quality.

The above figure has to upload an image file that the software has failed to display. This is a serious issue that can seriously cause business impacts.

Cosmetic Bugs And Their Significant Importance

Cosmetic requirements pertain solely to the software’s user interface or front-end appearance. It often changes between different releases most of the time.

This happens especially in the projects where the agile methodology is being followed. The releases occur here as sprints. Hence, they are usually called Sprint releases or just SR-xx, where ‘xx’ refers to the release number.

Every release can have a certain set of requirements. The clients prepare to request changes in the user interface or just the UI very often.

Following are a few examples of Cosmetic requirements:

• Menus has to be available with Calibri font.
• Textbox A has to be 1.2 inches.
• All reports generated have to have the title with H1 size with ‘002522’ color.

The above are a few examples of cosmetic requirements that can come up. These are the requirements mainly aimed at improving the usability of the software. Another reason behind the cosmetic requirements is to optimize the software and its design for the business purpose.

In the above figure, there are both functional and cosmetic issues. In the above figure, the option “Use DeathByCaptcha” lacks a displayed functional issue like a checkbox.

You can see a cosmetic issue here, such as the lack of a uniform font being used.

Priority Factor For Cosmetic Bugs Or Needs From Clients

The cosmetic needs are marked essential by the clients. This is because of the concern towards the need for making the interaction of the software very simple and efficient so that the accomplishment of goals occurs easily. In case there are issues with the user interface, clients reach the vendors with a low-priority bug.

The functional aspects of the software are concerned by the developers than the cosmetic aspects, as they are mostly low-impacted areas.

The Software Testers expect the software to include all client requirements, and if it doesn’t, they report it as a bug. And it is here where all takes off. The priority set by the tester occurs as an outcome of the client’s suggestion. Testers and developers have contrasting perspectives. Testers always evaluate the bug for its potential impact on functionality.

Here comes some recurring discussions and the outcome of it can have the recommendations from the testing team happen at some point. If not in the current release, it can happen in the subsequent one.

Real Example #1:

The client has requested the company logo to be appearing on the home page within the title frame, along with a quick loading feature. The vendor has delivered the software where the company logo takes time to load and the clients with the feeling that the logo is not loading raise a customer’s live issue.

Hence, this has done more damage to the vendors. The root cause of the issue might be the size of the image or nature of the image or anything else. Though this has no functional breaks, this has been put up as a live issue.

Functional bugs – Critical and priority factors

The bugs are prioritized based on the priority set by the clients and the potential impacts they can leave on the business. It is the general belief among the developers that the high critical bugs are to be worked on. This is more obvious as the functional bugs are something that suppresses their work.

Based on the priority, the clients want to prioritize a few of the functional and cosmetic bugs in the same release. The criticality factor depends on the impact or the potential impact the bug can leave. The priority factor is based purely on the client and their needs.

In terms of criticality, functional bugs are much significantly needed to be fixed without delays. For the cosmetic bugs, they can go with the decisions taken by the clients.

In the above figure, there are functional issues like design issues and text overlapping and cosmetic issues like the font problem.

Real Example #2:

The client, in example #1, had multiple releases from the same vendor. The vendors’ deliverables have met the clients’ satisfaction. Now suddenly there are a few business scenarios that the clients identified to be not working along with a few other lists of display issues.

As functionally impacting issues are considered being critical to the clients, they asked the vendors to fix them ASAP.

As the display issues had signs of leaving a lesser degree of impact, the clients prioritized them on multiple releases. The clients were prepared to launch fixes for some display issues and the majority of functional issues. All functions can affect the business, and even minor display issues can create significant impacts.

Business Impacts

All bugs may lead to some non-conformance in the software to that of the client’s requirements. With the impacts on business, it is definitely the functional bugs that deserve to cause severe impacts on the business. As cosmetic bugs conform to the issue with the UI design and appearance, they can create problems with usability and appearance among the users.

These are better called as cosmetic enhancements than bugs. Though these cannot impact the business severely in a greater fashion, they can bring in some difficulties among the users while using the software.

Real Example #3:

Vendors have delivered a new version of the software application in a mobile version. There are a few features in mobile apps that require the user to click on some links more often. This created a sense of degraded usability among users. The vendors have to reconsider the design and the flow of the application. After changing the flow, the application started getting multiple users using them.

Usability takes the main role in plenty of such applications. Though there were no functional changes, there were a few changes in cosmetics that made the applications grow stronger.

Comparative Study Between Cosmetic Bugs And The Functional Bugs

There can be several variations between the classifications of bugs like functional and cosmetic ones in multiple aspects of the Software testing life cycle. Few among them are formulated and tabulated as a difference between both the types:

Cosmetic bug illustrations

The cosmetic bug can cause an impact in some places where there are company logos or the partnerships’ images on the software, but it is not loading properly. Though they are non-functional bugs, they can become severe. Let us understand the following illustrations to understand the importance of cosmetic bugs and their significant role.

Case Study

Software A is being developed by the vendor B. The mode of deliverables to the client is as a code drop once in every month after a base version release has been made. From the delivered product, clients will list down all the issues, bugs, and enhancements based on their criticality and priority.

Priority goes as P1, P2, P3, and P4.
Criticality goes as Severe, Major, High, and Low.

Now the clients expect all the Severe, Major, P1 bugs to be fixed in week 30. Similarly, the High, P2 bugs in week 35. Low, P3 bug fixes are expected in week 40. Finally, P4 bugs are expected in week 40. Amidst all the bug fixes being released, the client reserves 3 separate 3-day buffer periods.

Now the following observation becomes very critical:

• Since it was designed to be pipelined, any delay will have a significant impact on future plans.
• Priorities are formed by the clients and hence they plan to release in the period they wish.
• The delay in low-priority bugs has the potential to upgrade their priority from low priority to higher.
• Minor delays can cause severe impacts on the business, leaving the low and minor bugs to become major.

Testers & Developers Meet

“Do not count the eggs before they get hatched” – This line applies to the developers and testers. When software has been developed and ready to be tested, the testers think of the above lines. Post-testing, it is now the developers’ turn to spell the lines to the testers.

The following are the thoughts flowing in between them:

• Testers tell the developers that there are so many bugs we can catch in your software. Hence, your work is not over.
• Once the testing phase is over and numerous bugs have been identified, developers warn against reporting additional bugs, as they will scrutinize the legitimacy of the ones already reported.

Hence, it is always a kind of argumentative approach that goes between the testers and the developers. To make sure the entire project’s deliverables are in sync, it is essential that an intermediate person (project manager) can solve the controversies so that the deliverables are optimized and absolute with no defect leakage.

Conclusion

The above articles must have explained all the unavoidable and important aspects of cosmetic bugs and how they can be compared with functional bugs. The article above also discusses the treatment of cosmetic bugs compared to functional bugs.

Though the criticalities of the functional bugs are higher than those of cosmetic bugs, the latter reserve their own place in getting priorities from the clients. In order to balance the software with resolutions for all the bugs, it is advised to treat the bugs understanding the criticality, priority, and the client’s recommendation.

About the author: The author of this article is Nagarajan. With a testing experience of more than 6 years, he currently serves as a test lead in areas like banking, airlines, and telecom. His expertise extends to both manual and automation testing.

What’s your take on Cosmetic and Functional bugs? I would like to see your thoughts below.