Friday, September 13, 2013

A Look at the Relationship Between Testers and Developers

I believe that one of the important things in the work life of a tester is to have a good working relationship with developers. This will not only make a tester's job and bug advocacy process easier but will also give him the ability to exert influence on quality, promote positive collaboration and learning opportunities.

Roy Osherove interviewed James Bach on “The Role of the Tester” where Bach talks about this. He says that:

‘…developers are the people who create quality; they make the quality happen. Without the developers, nothing would be there; you’d have zero quality.’

After all without developers on the project us – testers – will not have a job!

In the last few years I have worked thoroughly integrated into Agile development teams as a lone tester. I tend to gravitate more towards developers as opposed to testers as I feel that it helps me expand my domain knowledge and technical skills and…be a better tester. Plus programmers are WYSIWYG. I prefer it when people do not beat around the bush when working together.

http://qa-india.blogspot.com/2010/12/testers-vs-developers.html

On occasion I hear and read stories about the challenges and conflicts both sides have experienced in the workplace, as well as tips and recommendations on how to handle difficult situations and work on improvements from the tester’s viewpoint.

I thought it would be interesting to find out from developers what they thought about testers and their skills. I conducted a very unscientific survey of some developers that I have worked with and whom I also consider professional mentors and good friends.

The replies were pretty refreshing. I hope testers find them useful and take them into consideration in how they go about their work.

Here are the results: