Develpoers VS Testers: What's your experience?

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Permalink Reply by Manickam on July 2, 2009 at 6:19pm

-- Testers are not expected to fix the defect and neither I vote for it.
-- Will hint on my coaching experiences on a different thread; sorry, do not like to deviate the readers mind.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Crowther on July 4, 2009 at 5:38am

If a tester approaches thier role as one in which they are meant to police the work of developers, if they imagine they should test code directly, that they are not part of the development team and even to a degree that formaly logging bugs is a demonstration of thier ability - then it will be 'Testers vs Developers'. What else could it be?

If however the tester feels their role is to collaborate with developers to get working code developed and shipped, that the Developers can be trusted to test thier own code (direct testing of code at the Unit and Component Integration level), that when they do this logging bugs after CI is mainly for tracking purposes and not measurement of individual or comparative competency - then the point scoring and disjointed agendas will fade away.

My experience has been in both camps and to shift from the Us v Them approach usually requires a brave and unilateral shift by the Test team. This allows the Testers to take the 'moral high ground' and act in a much more professional and collaborative way. It takes time for the Developers to trust the situation and respond in kind but as Michel Kraaij said the key is never to bite back.

If you then find Developers trying to deflect issues, ask why you missed bug, etc. they very quickly find themselves isolated by this approach which will bug by bug, project by project show everyone they are perpetuating the unhelpful Us v Them situation.

Mark.

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Permalink Reply by Duane Harnish on July 7, 2009 at 8:32pm

Seyi: I think the first problem is within your question... "it's testers duty to work out good working relationship with developers". It is not the testers duty alone, but rather both the testers and developers duty. Unfortunately, we as testers only have the ability to control our own efforts towards that end... so if developers aren't owning up to their end of the bargain in working out good working relationship, the situation won't be ideal.

In response to Mark Crowther's reply: You indicate that if the tester imagines that they are not part of the development team, then it will be 'Testers vs Developers'... and seem to infer that it is incorrect for the tester to imagine it that way. I suggest that in some organizations, it is in fact the reality of the situation (and not the tester's fault to imagine it that way). In our test organization we have diligently attempted to unilaterally shift from the Us v Them approach, but the developerment organization has not responded in kind (in fact shifted has further away from the ideal collaborative approach over the last decade). There's only so much that can be done without Test Management, Development Management, and Upper Management agreeing with implementing positive steps towards tearing down the walls.

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Permalink Reply by Michel Kraaij on July 7, 2009 at 9:34pm

"In our test organization we have diligently attempted to unilaterally shift from the Us v Them approach, but the developerment organization has not responded in kind (in fact shifted has further away from the ideal collaborative approach over the last decade)."

What were your attempts and how did you notice the development organization didn't respond to your attempts? In what way did you notice and experience this? What did you do about it?

"There's only so much that can be done without Test Management, Development Management, and Upper Management agreeing with implementing positive steps towards tearing down the walls."

Which walls? Walls of non-teamwork or just walls on not communicating with each other? Management can't force better teamwork. Neither can it force better communication.

Communicating is not about changing your environment. It's about changing yourself towards the environment. Changing the environment is something you can try to accomplish. But this is way harder than changing your attitude towards your environment. You can influence it, but you cannot actually change it. Neither can you, nor can management.

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Permalink Reply by Abdul on July 9, 2009 at 9:10am

Hi there:

Yes , tester has to maintain a very good professional relationship with the developers, @ times tester has to understand the logic ,how it is implemented in order to perform good testing, only the developer can provide this info. Because most of the time there are no functional spec, design docs..nothing.

Some times developers take things seriously, so you have to be very careful.

Thanks
Abdul

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Permalink Reply by Ram on July 9, 2009 at 1:08pm

A great topic to discuss about ...

ATTITUDE - I think it is the Developers attitude towards the test individuals that causes such conflicts. As long as both the teams work hand in hand towards common goals of quality deliverable to customers, such an issue would not rise. I have heard some people jokingly saying - it is the job security, dev keeps introducing defects, test keeps finding the defects - well although this was said as humor, but it is the trusty relationship both counterparts build together. dev and test are two side of the same coin, they both contribute towards great product(s)

I have also heard the categorizing of development team as the engineering team- which is the combination of coders, test individuals, program managers/project managers developing a feature / product perspective - so likewise all project participants are developers of the outcome .

" I always hear it's testers duty to work out good working relationship with developers" -- > It depends on how test individuals behave when they find defect - do they point this out as a defect at coder's face value or do they make it encouraging and collaborative towards the common goal? How about test individuals being inferior in their attitude and presume coders are always great? Note however, the organizations and some upper level management folks (if they don't have testing background) still do differentiate between these two functional coungterparts and recognize accordingly - this has to change - but again it is all in human minds.

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Permalink Reply by Srinivas on July 11, 2009 at 6:36pm

hi
it is the nice topic,whatever it may be we can provied good qulaity softwere to the customer,whenever we have negetive feelings on developers at that time we(Tester's) can more identifi bugs,as well as devlopers are great Person's,But Testers are greatest person bcz he is identifi devlopers bugs
Thks
cnu
vasuth2008@gmail.com

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Permalink Reply by Michel Kraaij on July 11, 2009 at 7:49pm

Ofcourse a tester is great! (we have to have some ego ;)) But a developer would be (or already is) far more great if he/she takes preventive countermeasures in preventing the unintentional creation of faulty software (leading to the bugs).

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