Recently one of Testlions said that software testers sometimes feel they are undervalued. Software testing is important step before launching new products but there are things that de-motivate testers. Among others is closing their reported issues without fixing.So we asked around a little and got some answers why issues are closed without further actions. Most Testlio clients are following lean development methodology. They expect quite the same from testing and testers. Testers are disturbed when an issue is closed without comment and further actions. We are not talking about closing issues after they are solved. There might be several reasons for that: Low priority bugs are closed because they are “nice-to-have” instead of “must-fix-now”. Every company needs to take decisions what are next features that they develop or build. Priorities are important in order to plan work effectively. But it doesn’t mean that the issues weren’t noticed, they might be in the list already. Developing a software product is never done – it needs improvements, planning and vision. If issue is closed because there wasn’t proper documentation, then it shows that tester didn’t give effort on explanations. This is serious mistake by tester. If tester didn’t give proper information for developers to reproduce the issue then developers don’t know where to look for fixes. We spoke about proper bug reporting in our last blog post through KISS method. Reported issue is not a bug but an improvement. Sometimes test cycle assignment might request ideas for improvement as well, but most of the time it’s about searching for broken issues and bugs. This is why it’s important to read the assignment, what is the focus of testing during particular test cycle, to make sure that it’s relevant for current development phase. Sharing information and talking with other testers in the team helps to reduce issues that might not be relevant. Team members should talk to each other to discuss if and what bugs are important to report and inline with the requirements from the client. Great communication in the team is important for positive peer review and feedback to offer quality results at the end. If you feel de-motivated because an issue was closed and no actions taken, remember that your work and passion for testing is important for millions of happy end-users out there. #lovetesting Written by Kristel – the cofounder of Testlio