Incident management tool is also known as a defect-tracking tool, a defect-management tool, a bug-tracking tool or a bug-management tool. However, ‘incident management tool’ is perhaps a better name for it because not all of the things tracked are actually defects or bugs; incidents may also be perceived problems, anomalies that are not necessarily be defects. Also what is normally recorded is information about the failure (not the defect) that was generated at the time of testing and the information about the defect that caused that failure would come to light when someone (e.g. a developer) begins to look into the failure.

Incident reports undergo a number of stages from initial identification and recording of the details, through analysis, classification, assignment for fixing, fixed, re-tested and closed, as described in Chapter 5. Ultimately, incident management tools make it much easier to keep track of the incidents.

Features or characteristics of incident management tools are:

• To store the information about the attributes of incidents (e.g. severity).
• To store attachments (e.g. a screen shot).
• To prioritize incidents.
• To assign actions to people (fix, confirmation test, etc.).
• status (e.g. open, rejected, duplicate, deferred, ready for confirmation test, closed);
• To report the statistics/metrics about incidents (e.g. average time open, number of incidents with each status, total number raised, open or closed).

Incident management tool functionality may be included in commercial test management tools.

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