Writing a good bug report
For anyone who reports software problems to a development team or vendor: support and service desk staff, testers, product and operations people, and developers filing for other teams. No prerequisites. You'll write a summary that identifies the problem uniquely, numbered steps to reproduce with expected and actual results kept separate from guesses, the environment details and evidence a developer needs, file it the right way (duplicates checked, one issue per report, the right component or template, and private reporting for security problems), and correct weak reports from colleagues. Grounded in Mozilla's Bug Writing Guidelines, Chromium's bug reporting guidelines and GitHub's issue documentation. For finding the cause yourself, see 'Debugging methodically'; for support escalations, see 'Escalating to engineering'. Ends with a supervisor-graded report rewrite.
- Level
- Beginner
- Length
- About 80 minutes
- Contents
- 5 lessons · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 10 Oct 2026
Skills you'll practise
- Write a bug summary that identifies the problem uniquely in about ten words
- Write numbered steps to reproduce with expected and actual results, separating observations from guesses
- Identify the environment details and evidence a bug report needs, such as version, platform, logs and a reduced test case
- Choose how to file a bug: duplicate search, one issue per report, the right component or template, and private reporting for security problems
- Correct a weak bug report by finding missing, vague, unrelated or sensitive information
Course outline
- 1.Write a bug summary that identifies the problem uniquelyLesson · 12 min
- 2.Write numbered steps to reproduce with expected and actual resultsLesson · 18 min
- 3.Identify the environment details and evidence a bug report needsLesson · 16 min
- 4.Choose how to file a bug: duplicates, one issue per report, templates and securityLesson · 14 min
- 5.Correct a weak bug reportLesson · 10 min
- 6.Writing a good bug report: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 14 questions
- 7.Writing a good bug report: practical exerciseKnowledge check · 1 question
- 8.Final exam10 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
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