Problem solving using KT Matix

 

One of the goals of a Tester is to find accurate bugs and also the reason for the occurance of the bug. By accurate bugs, what I mean is a bug that can be repro’ed. If the bug repo’s intermittently then try to establish a pattern for the occcurance of the bug. This boils down to the issue of root cause analysis and problem solving. Kepner Trogoe matrix for decision making/problem solving helps to solve the issue. We can make use of the following matrix as a template

 

	Is conditions (where defect appears)	Is not conditions (where there is no defect)
Input values
Configurations
Environment
Others

 

A hypothetical example will better help to understand the problem. Since, I am from the winforms team, I could come up with a winforms example. Let us say I installed a 3rd party controls and add them to my toolbox in visual studio. Now when I start dragging and dropping the 3rd party controls / winforms controls from my toolbox on to the designer, VS crashes. Let us see how we can use the above matrix to come to a conclusion about the issue

 

	Is conditions (where defect appears)	Is not conditions (where there is no defect)
Configuration	Installed 3rd Party Control	Did not Install 3rd party control
Input values	Drop a Winforms Control on the toolbox Drop the 3rd party control on the toolbox	Drop a Winforms control on the toolbox
Environment	XP, Windows Server2003, Vista	XP, Windows Server 2003, Vista
Others	English VS, Japanese VS	English VS, Japanese VS

 

We can easily make out from the above table that when we installed the 3rd party controls, the support for dragging and dropping controls from toolbox to designer is disturbed and we can further work on the issue.