Some testing lingo

Looking through the social group shows that I was using some "lingo" that the testers and the rest of the team regularly use. Every job in the world has some sort of custom words and/or definitions it uses, and testing is no different. Here are some of the words we use and some working (eg, not technically accurate) definitions:

Repro - This is the word that got me thinking about this topic. Short for reproduce, or reproducible, we use this all the time. "Does the bug repro 100% of the time, or is it intermittent?" "Repro only on XP or all Oses?" are some examples.

Not Repro - a way to resolve a bug. A real bug in that we know the behavior we report actually exists, but we cannot cause it to happen again. Should be a rare resolution, and should also be a little bit scary. A role of testers is to find repro steps for these bugs. This may also be a "can't repro" if someone writes it - the point is that, for some reason, the person making the comment can't get the bug to happen. Again, this doesn't mean the reported behavior doesn't happen. It just means "it's not happening for me, right now."

Repro Steps: a list of steps that if followed will cause the bug to occur. Ideally, this is a step by step guide that anyone can follow. Many times, this is the toughest part of any bug to narrow down.

Config: the configuration of the system you are testing. May only need to be client details such as OS, amount of RAM, versions of software installed, but may also include details of server being used, like SkyDrive. Can also have details around other hardware being used, with printers and video cards being good examples.

Duplicate or dupe: another resolution to a bug or report. To test or dev, if the same fix takes care of bug X, then any other bug that also gets fixed by this change is a duplicate report of that bug. This is not always obvious when looking through reported bugs to see if someone has already reported the problem I am seeing since some bugs can be noticed from different starting points. To technical support folks, a duplicate report may only be considered a duplicate if the reported repro steps are the exact same. They follow a different process so having a slightly different definition here is OK.

I hope this is a little bit helpful.  If not, let me know!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John