Develpoers VS Testers: What's your experience?

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Permalink Reply by Pradeep Soundararajan on March 17, 2009 at 1:16pm

Hi Seyifunmi Akinsola,

Warm welcome to Test Republic!

I am glad to discuss about this topic with you and other testers here. I am very much interested to listen to your experience. The reason I am curious is because I think coming from a different geographical place, you would have had a different experience than us. Or it would be interested to hear if you had an experience similar to that of us and other people.

I hope you would honor my request and share your stories with us.

Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com

Software Testing Videos: http://www.viddler.com/explore/testertested

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Permalink Reply by M.V. Manoj on March 18, 2009 at 10:47am

Hi Seyi,

This is an interesting topic and has often come up whenever I had discussions with my Tester friends. Some testers I interacted with did have issues with developers in their team not cooperating with testing folks.

As far as I am concerned, I have worked in teams where instead of “Developers Vs Testers” – it was “Developers And Testers” working towards a common goal of getting out a better product. It doesn’t mean that we never had differences or debates. There used to be lot of technical debates and difference of opinions between Testers and Developers but it never used to be a personal attack on someone. And after these debates and discussions - everyone would get back to normal, had lunch together, had parties together and would always be a helping hand to others irrespective of he/she being a developer or a tester.

I think the “Developer Vs Tester” motto mostly comes up when the Developers consider Testers as a threat and think that by finding Defects, a Tester is finding fault in their work rather than aiding a better release of the Product.

-manoj

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Permalink Reply by Rafael Sartor on March 18, 2009 at 1:43am

I consider myself lucky on this subject. Ever since I began reading about testing there is always a comment about how testers and developers are in some sort of war, but on the company I work our relationship couldn't be better. My opinions are fully respected, even though I am less experienced than most of the developers, specially on the field where the company is.

I believe that one of the reasons for this is that the request for a testing department came from the developers themselves. The software part of our product is extremely complex, and they saw that the problems that were being found could be diminished if there was somebody fully dedicated to find them beforehand. By what observe, they don't take a bug report as a critic to them, but as a critic to the end product. Since our company's philosophy is fully turned to give our clients the best product possible, this is due specially for the fact that we are a small company trying to get into a market dominated by huge companies, so every little problem counts as a loss of value to our product.

Another factor that really helps is that we share the same physical space, so we are always in touch, this really helps me because I can get new ideas of how to test based on comments that I hear every day and I am always updated on what is being done by them.

Since the beginning we were in total contact with our clients, sometimes literally camping on some trying to find a problem that was reported, gathering every piece of information they gave and trying to improve based on this.

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Permalink Reply by Seyi Akinsola on March 18, 2009 at 2:08am

Thanks for your contribution, Rafael. My experience is quite similar to yours. I work in a medium sized organisation with tester and developers sharing same physical space. I actually sit directly behind two developers. This greatly enhances our relationship. Every bug discovered and removed is view as one bug less going to production, and we are very passionate aboout this.

Thanks
Seyi

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Permalink Reply by Sumit Kalra on March 18, 2009 at 9:27am

If you are working in Products, never underestimate developers. In products, the main thing is domain knowledge and my project's Tech Leads have awesome product knowledge..

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Permalink Reply by sharath on March 18, 2009 at 10:44am

I have previously worked for start up and currently a medium sized company. I see very little difference the way software is developed and tested in start up or mid sized companies. But, I have noticed a huge difference between a product company and a service company. The approach, attitude toward development or testing or marketing or policies is very different.

My relationships with the development teams have been pretty good. There have been many instances wherein I have learnt from them and vice-versa. I have worked in many assignments as a single tester with 8-12 developers and I feel it’s very important for a tester to be respected by the development team, and this respect should be earned by the tester.

On the other hand, I have observed, experienced that a tester reporting to a development lead is a very bad idea, especially if the tester is new to testing.

-Sharath.B
http://testtotester.blogspot.com/

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Permalink Reply by Jayshree Rathod on March 19, 2009 at 10:04am

The best comment I ever got is "We have coded it, so v must be knowing BIT more than u"

There was a time when v have been asked to cut the direct communication to the development Team. Sometimes we raise the bugs in the Web application, they do change at their end & after few mins we got the bug back with the Feed back " not reproducible. please do inform us it it reoccurs", Means they resolved the issue but pretend like if it was not there before.

It happens. It's a part of our job:). Now I take it as a fun so that i can do my job well

Jayshree Rathod

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Permalink Reply by Mark Crowther on July 4, 2009 at 5:07am

"..cut the direct communication to the development Team"

This is part of the mentallity that causes rifts between Development and Testing Staff. Next time someone says this to you remind them you're involved in the development of software just as the Product Owners, BA's, Architects and Developers are - we're ALL the development team.

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Permalink Reply by Debabrata Chatterjee on May 19, 2009 at 8:40pm

Developer Vs Tester???? Hmmmmm… nice topic.

From my experience I can only tell you that it doesn’t bother me at all professionally. When I am involved in a testing assignment, I only challenge the Development, not the developer.

I believe in a specific Testing philosophy - As a tester my job is to find out how robust the application is, not to find out how robust the Developer’s knowledge is.

I share a very cool personal relationship even with the developers as I do it with my testers. After I raise and communicate my findings to the respective stakeholders, As a tester it doesn’t bother myself so much what the owners are going do with the findings…!!!

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Permalink Reply by Mark Crowther on July 4, 2009 at 5:12am

"As a tester my job is ... not to find out how robust the Developer’s knowledge is."

I agree with the last part of this statement. Is it any wonder Developers gets p***ed with us when we think our job is the direct testing of thier CODE? It's such a holier-than-though attitude that would cause serious friction the other way around if they felt they should check every line of our Test Cases for example.

We need to focus on what we're there to do (all the other testing) and let the Developers do the Unit and Component Integration testing of thier own code.

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Permalink Reply by Tapan on July 2, 2009 at 12:51am

Execellent topic........debatbale but no conclusion..........

I am putting in this way.....testers are the group of people who gives the full justic to development team on production environment.......

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Permalink Reply by Pradeep Soundararajan on July 2, 2009 at 8:32am

You might want to consider thinking of a conclusion as testers and developers being together as a team working towards a common goal. If you are of the opinion of giving full justice to development team then I am not sure if you could scale with that idea in mind.

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