Today we will discuss an interesting Software Testing topic which is indeed a hot topic in any organization. Yes as a tester or QA you can guess it, nothing other than Testers vs. Developers.
Testers The Troublemakers
It’s funny, how almost all developers worldwide consider Testers to be the troublemakers.
Actually, it’s not their fault, no one likes to hear faults in his/her own baby. This is the same thing that we (tester) are doing, of course, the intention behind that is to deliver quality output to the client. There is constant bitterness at some point in the game between these two roles.
Wondering why? It’s the genre and responsibility of these two roles.
When the bug count increases or bugs are severe and it’s causing difficulty for the developer to solve that bug, then developer gets frustrated at the count as well as the person. The level of understanding between these two roles conflicts not only in one place but in many areas.
So how can we build a good and understanding relationship between Testers and Developers?
Out of my experience, teamwork and friendship are the best solutions.
If you can be a good friend of the developer then you can challenge him to issues, and for sure that person takes it positively and works better. It’s the responsibility of both to ensure that the ultimate output is to work at its best. Meanwhile, the developers should ensure that there are no bugs out of what they develop.
The testers should ensure that if there are bugs, then those should be given, handled at the correct time and scope, where completion comes in.
When you are a QA, working with a team for a long time, then the relationship between you and developers becomes friendlier.
As a team, you are able to work together in finding defects beforehand, which is always appreciated. Not only that, sitting together in a discussion of designs and solutions can make the developers be aware of the different issues and areas to improve quality, thereby taking the quality mindset a step further.
As a tester, you can find the Defects but it’s always good to share some tactics with the Developers on how to test the application. This might help the developers to test better before delivering the product. But this can work only if everyone is co-operative enough to look at the final target i.e. “to deliver with quality”.
Share Your Thoughts
What do you think is the best way to make the developers and QA relationship healthy?
A few of my thoughts on this are:
#1) Share your strategy with developers. Don’t keep it in mind thinking that you will mark it as an issue at a later stage.
#2) Try to build friendly relationships with developers, so that they can feel comfortable to share anything with you.
#3) Keep your issue reporting style positive, it should not hurt someone’s feelings.
You might be a developer or QA, feel free to add your thoughts in this discussion. So that our ultimate aim of “delivering quality output” will be achieved together.
About the Author: This is a guest article by ‘Tejaswini Patil’. She is working with an E-learning organization as an Associate Manager QA.
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Bullcrap! Testing is so boring and too small of an activity to be a job. you just have to use and find defects in software that programmers create. There is nothing new you’d be using same tool all the time be it QTP etc. No use of technology & no power to create.
I think whatever Vijay has suggested is right.
I have always been an SQA ever since I started working, and yes developers and QA’s always tend to repel each other. Most developers have positive mindsets whereas we QA people have negative mindset. Oftentimes it’s hard to point out several defects to a developer who is not that open to accept that his work is not defect free, but as long as you communicate it in a friendly, professional manner, try to make it look like you’re doing him a favor or help (because the documented defect won’t reach the client anymore, that’s bigger trouble), always make sure you can backup your statements and provide screenshots, and even videos so that there is always proof.
I think chatting and spending time with developers where the topic is not about work also helps you become a little bit more closer to them. Try to always greet them whenever possible, ocassionally ask for their input or help and praise them when it’s due.
Friendly relationship with developers is the best way to keep your relationships cool with the Development Team. This can be done by sharing our time and Lunch box in Lunch break . This will help you to make our relationship better with Developers.
Sharing the Test cases some time can harm your incentive parameters so keep both the things in balance and try to improve your relationship instead of sharing our test cases prior to execution!!
There are few more things:
1. Wish good morning to colleagues, when you come to the office.
2. Wish good evening while leaving the office.
3. Don’t forget to send greetings on birthday and marriage anniversary.
4. Appreciate their good work in Interface.
5. Suggest and help the trainee developers to write their code better. This will help you to improve your relationship better in present and future also.
@ Madhuri
You can write back to me at tejaswini.hedawoo@gmail.com
@Dimple
No i don’t think so, if IDE is applicable for developers then it should be for Testers as well.
I wish if there was machine / deivce which could display the metric on processing capabilities of mind.This would
have reveled that mind processing required for architecturing the complex testing environment and writing complex algorithm is the same.So lets not compare.Making imagination to work is for both the people.
DEVQA
Very Nice Article!!!
QA/tester – are there to find defects in system, not in developers.
@Ritesh Chandawar
Your second scenario is not permitted, as I know in many companies. When testers got faults, they should log it somewhere, like in VSTS, so that the manager can trace the advancement of given faults.
It’s very difficult to maintain healthy relationship between coder and tester. coder job is hide bugs from tester whereas tester work to find as many.
That’s not a coder’s job at all, and that’s not even a tester’s job.
Both of their jobs is to deliver quality to the end user.
Yes, the battle between these two clan is inevitable. But there are other aspects to it.
1. There are people who take it so seriously that next time when his/her module come for test. It becomes challenge for tester to come up with bugs.
2. There are people who instead of working on their work/code comes up with fault in the bug report. test cases, or any mistake that does not fall into development domain.
3. There are people who does not bother at all. They leave it to the tester to find bugs, clarify the requirement to development team, and at times they just don’t bother to listen to what testing team has to say about the bug. Their intention is to let the bug be identified by the client and then I will fix.
These are some of the situations that I have faced during my years of testing careers.
Excellent article indeed. the earlier it is realised by both tester and developer that they are on the same side, the better it will be for both. and both will benefit in the process. when i was a product developer, and qa came up with defects or comments, i used to get stubborn and etch for a fight. but now years later, we have become good friends, and i have realised how he has helped me become a good developer.
Congratulations, Tejaswini on this small but very good write up. do write more.
and yes the picture is also good.
Vidyut
Awesome!! the comparison between Dev and QA but practically this comparison may not true because the developer and tester both have their respected responsibilities and they are following their standards, the friendly relationship may the causes the exceptions and enemy relationship creates the out of bound so my opinion is there should not be any comparisons between devs and QA that is their duty
and other thing is developer will implements by learning bu the QA will test by thinking….
@ Motiram Patil
Very valid points, both should understand their responsibilities. I know Motiram, and being a developer he posted very positive comment for this article.
Thank you so much.
Hey Tej! Good Article! I agree to what you say, building a good relation within the team is a must, more over one should have a general conversation apart from project. It’s a human tendency not accept negative feedback or review, but if one as a developer takes negative view as positive this will enhance the product development but also his development skills for the next assignment….keep writing such good articles…Hat’s Off!
An issue I as a project manager have experienced many times. I think the bottom line is most comments here are aimed at massaging developers egos and the main issue is developers think they are superior to testers. QA is now a well established profession and as they become more professional, they will hopefully get more respect.
You said a software developer can be a tester, but I must say software tester cant be a good software developer. There is no comparison between software tester and developer. Software Tester are nothing before software developer. A developer uses whole of the mind, techniques, effort to write a piece of code to develop a software or application, and what a tester does, just test that and find bugs, if this work is assigned to another developer, he can easily do testing because a developer can be a good tester, but a tester cant be a good developer.
ohhh
Addtional to mentioned points:
Whenever they deserved it is good give appreciation words for their work… I personally experienced all developers like this and hav gud relationship with us(testers)
Nice Article Tej.
My few cents
–embrace each other with warm welcome.
–don’t forget to write appreciate word for eachother work.
-last but not least clear and anticipated communication
Good article Tejaswini,
I have read few more articles about developers and testers relationship before. The fact is that the project/product goal should be clear to all team members. If a product is delivered with high quality and within the time line, testers only are not creditable for that; developers and whole team is equally shares the credit.
Basically it’s a learning process, developer learns to write efficient, optimized and quality code; testers learn how, when and what to trace for the bug; and ultimately it becomes the practice for both. So there is no issue of conflicts between each other. But still all this is an ideal scenario.
A healthy relationship between whole team can deliver a good product as team work for a common goal.
i want to test one application which is same as appli itunes.. i want to know some quality test cases scenerios for that application
Yeh! I am agree to the points mentioned by Tejaswini, However would like to add some points to the above list..
There could be time when clients wants a software to be developed by keeping the end user in mind and developers may develop it accordingly.
In such a scenario, Its developer to explain how a particular functionalities is to be tested and its a QA to understand the needs of the client to test the same in required fashion.
Again, once the bug is raised, developer should first think from QA perspective and then act according instead of directly jumping to the battle if any :o).
It is really important for both to understand the real need of how and where the quality of software should go.
@ Dimple
Development and testing environment will always be the same. Yes, it may happen that tester will find more defect and development will less. Coz it’s tester job to find defects and it’s developers job to review his/her work.
Actually, we in our org follows the same strategy, making friendship is the very good way for handling the developers. Also If we QA guys tell the in very quiet mode, then he/she will understand it soon..
-Shagy
Thanks Vijay…
I am the only tester in a team with 3 developers. All it takes to have a good relationship are these:
1. Always judge objectively.
2. Report professionally.
3. Discuss openly.
Hi All,
In today’s Agile world there is no separate development team and the test team..There is only one team that is Product team.. This team contains number of developers, testers, BAs, Db people etc.,etc..Final goal of the Product team is to deliver the quality product on time and in budget.
Now days to bring the different team together so many companies allowing the members of one team to work in other teams, it not only cross skill the employees but also help to understand the challenges of other team…
SO I think we are all belongs to only one team, that is Product team and our goals is to deliver the quality product and hence make our client happy.
…
The way the tester need to approach with the developer is important….. ya its a nice article..
Create the environment where the collaboration is carried our with mutual professional respect, no private agendas, and the ties are developed. To testers, do your homework, don’t just flag things because you don’t understand the functionality. To the developers, when your QA asks for time/meeting, make it happen; a tester seeking answers is a bug resolved before it happened.
I can see same pattern in UAT participants and tech team…it doesn’t have to hostile if both are working with a sense of cooperation and open communication.
Hi All,
What I said about relationship of Tester and Developer, I am working as a Tester since 3.4 Years but I know how to make work from developer cause Tester always find fault in developer work and nobody wanna bad stuff in his/her own baby. So I would suggest to all Tester be make fruitful relation to developer.
Thanks
Hahaha …. looks like you are an amateur . See boss you have to shoot them at point blank … keep them guessing and always be a step ahead of them …. They will buy all the bullshits from you later on.
i want to ask a doubt please …..how about (mainframe testing and mainframe admin )……….and how about software testing …..plz give me the correct differences. AS a fresher I m really confused to choose my career i have completed mainframe admin but no hope for openings now and I have decided to start my career as tester …….but only one doubt is ….after 2 year will it be possible for me to shift my career from normal testing to (mainframe either admin or appl .).or else to developer .in any field ..since I m really interested in mainframe i ask this question ……..plz help me out …im really confused and also I m making u people to get confused i suppose :-P…..and what shld i chose ….regarding the salary package ..etc etc
the best way is to make it friendly but with some type of kindly formality.
testing/QA managers contributes towards the organization strategy.
and i love the challenge way but if it is not controlled it will diverse from required objectives.
and last thing to say it is professionalism in work, understanding of rules and wise management is the best
best as always.
battle between tester and developer will continue. it should be always in positive directions. don’t take things personally.
what else i can say?
best luck testers!
Tejaswini,
Infact i also answered same as u mentioned by stating only diff would be login credentials from dev to testing…but interviewer was not convinced…no idea if they were looking a specific term/explaination called IDE 🙁
Hi, Tejaswini, it’s very good article and all well said, as long as we approach the developers in friendly manner and patiently explaining the issues, we can maintain the good relationship with them. We do this way in our team, and we always have good relationship with development team. Thanks for your article. Keep writing more articles like this.
Viswa
what are the similarities between developer and tester?
Good! Good! Keep it up
@ GaneshRam
Great said, yes it’s true.
To add to the topic, one most important thing is that how we put the defect or report the defect in tracker(excel or tool) means the description matters in keeping the developers acceptance with easy. for example : use words like, it would be ideal to have the validation……, we suggest to have the alignments taken care….
It would be ideal to share the logical flows and validations discussed in the presence of dev and testing team along with tech leads.
Keep posted unclear cases in common place and get clarified in common meetings.
For all Testers:
The best tester isn’t the one who finds the most bugs or embarrasses the most developers. The best tester is the one who gets THE RIGHT(not most) bugs fixed.
@adithya
Thanks for your views 🙂
df
@ adithya
yeah… you are right. but this article is more concern about overall relationship than project debate relationship or project quality. As u said QA member should be aggressive on them but at same time we have to maintain good relationship apart from meeting room battle. we have to remember, developer also working hard for the project.
@ times, both tester and developer do silly mistakes.
Thanks Tejaswini for ur post.
Great article with which I can only agree completly. Similar conflict problems you find between Project Managers and Test Managers and in my experience the same general tricks works in these cases. Clear and anticipated comunication. Strong friendly relationships and try to be a nice guy. 🙂
I cannot agree more that the best way is to become a good friend with devs. A nice lunch can sometime clear the relationship problem. However, this is a bit difficult for remote devs and testers, where we never be able to physically interact with each other. Yes, we may have a chit chat using skype or hipChat or else. But, that will not be as powerful as offline interaction. Any idea?
I haven’t read all comments so some one must have covered it, but I want to make some points here.
As everyone said Testers are always rival of Developers…. is it true, as long as you will point out their (developers) faults in form of Bug, Defect, Issue and whatever u call, they will think that you are their enemy.
But if you know how to present your issue in front of them then you can solve many problem their itself.
So how to do that? (It my or you can say RC’s technique)
Always present your defect in term of inconsistency in the workflow as a user point of view and not as a defect.
Rather than saying this is defect, say if user will do this then he will get this so do you think this is right?
After this he him self will say no this is a defect please log it. (Tht’s it your job is done.)
Another Scenario:
Rather than filing defect in a system if you are seating close to developer always say that it is very hectic to log a defect in system and track it, it will consume both of our time so can you please try to fix it if possible. Most of the time developers will agree to this kind of situation because they also don’t want more defects against their own developed area.
Please try these technique and let me know if those are working for you.
ritesh.chandawar@gmail.com\
Ritesh Chandwar
SSQA
🙂
@shakti gupta totally disagree… a good tester can always be a good developer, a good developer will not be always a good tester, there are certain skills that you can’t learn in a book. You can always read about how to implement a better algorithm but you will never find a book about “where are the bugs”.
What is/Is there any difference between development and testing environment.
Ex: With same application (AUT) development will find less defects but testing find more defects. what is the cause does the environment impact pls let me know diff b/w dev and testing environment
It’s really a helpful article Tejaswini mam !!!
Thanks Tejaswini it really helped me to improve my relationship with my peers
Tejaswini,
Thanks for the info……could be they were expecting something particular stuff that has been followed in their company…:-)
Good topic Tejaswini, I feel it’s also good act to have some kind of best practice incorporated as part of project management process. Having a formal discussion set on board, discuss all aspects of what developer understand and tester understand from client requirements, keeping in mind the actual purpose of “Why client asked this requirement?” .To get the value out of this meet some one should surely break the ice, either it be tester / developer and make other think and speak-out. Reason of having such discussion is making those who are not going friendly with cross teams and not sharing their value added thoughts wrt preventive action; make them involved as part of job. So formally having such process will make them practice this and first successful project release will surely have its impact left. And appreciating the individuals for their insight and reasoning skills is must, as this is default motivating factor irrespective of in which profession one is. What all it takes to make customer delighted, manager/management should think, consider, promote and encourage value added process refinements in team . As in past now also detection act hold more visibility then prevention act, this is one possible cause why individuals are not focusing on teamwork/being friendly to other teams, as all done as part of prevention are always considered unseen efforts. But if management gives proportionate value to both preventive and detections acts, more value added services can be assured for client and even every individual will be left with good feel EOD from their services offered.
huh frienshippppp… It reminds me dialogues from Dr. Asthana ( Movie: Munna Bhai M.B.B.S) “If I’m to operate my dughter; my hands will tremble because I love her”.. In the same way if I’m developer’s friend I may have some soft corner for his work in my heart and I may not be aggressive against the work product.
I think instead of friendship we need professionalism. Make developers realize that Quality is the common objective and common responsibility and Testers work to find bugs in work product and not in developer; so it should not be taken personal.
Waste article
yes, it is fruitful idea.
after all we are the friends right?
Very nice article.
friendly relations in developers and testers can solve many problems.
BTW photo is quite interesting 🙂
Hi All
Realy nice article
I am also working with an E-learning organization as an Associate Test engineer. I want some suggestions from Tejaswini patil. Can u pls give me email address of her?
Developer don’t understand the SDLC and complex test cases that’s why they are angry when QA find bugs.
A good article……..i have very good relation with developers………We always appreciates each others work and helping to understand or describe the problem. The best example is that we are indulge in buddy testing.
Thanks!
Have them sit in the same room and lock the door 🙂
Professionalism should be the mandatory thing. In my company, currently i am facing issues with the Development team. I tried to make the process as much as professional as it could be. QA team used to add very genuine issues, but developers directly reject most of them as “Not a Bug” and they do comment as “We don’t want to fix this issue” without proper explanation. But they do fix it from there side. Developers comes to the desk of the QA team member and started shouting very unprofessionally. I tried convincing them that take everything professionally rather than personally, but they do not understand. What to do in such situation ? I raised this issue to the Directors of the company, and directors used to say that they are your brothers and sisters. So you please behave politely, does not matter how do they behave with you.
Need your help. How can I improve the relations ?
I hope one method could be, to present the issue as neutral and with as many evidence as possible in form of a question. Is that, what WE have intended? Include yourself and them in the development-process. Make clear, you see the team-work here. Together you are building an excellent software not apart. Appreciate their work and ask for respect for your work in a calm manner. It is tough to stay calm, when somebody comes to your desk and yells at you. Make clear you have a problem with the manner not the topic. Look out for something called “nonviolent communication”. That might help.
Asking questions instead of making allegations helped me a lot with my team. Some QA-people don’t behave kindly either.
It sounds like you’re the one taking it personally instead of professionally. If they tell you a bug is lacking an explanation, think of this as them reaching out to you for more help instead rejecting their legitimate concerns.
It’s not enough to call yourself a professional. Be the professional that you think they are.
hi everyone,
It was nice to read something which is very common it industry and no one try to share their thoughts on this perspective.Great to have so many comments related to this.I am a QA person as always i give high priority for quality.Regards to the concept,i would like to say that it all depends on team work.IF testers do their job well and developers do their job well,with no doubt quality comes into place at the right time.Its good have a good understanding between two different and very challenging category.I would like to suggest that ,it will be nice to have a debate on the project which they handle ,once in a month,i feel it will be nice and really challenging and everyone will get a chance to raise their voice.cool.Thats about it.Thank you for spending your precious time on reading this.good luck.Last but not the least,Testers,”you just rock”.
Thats a fantastic article Vijay,.Friendly relationship with developers is the best way to keep your relationships cool with the Development Team.
It was fun reading this article.
Thanks to Tejeswani and others. Becaus i am fresher and i have no idia about software Testing. But while i saw information about this topic from you, i really happy and its intresting. And i try to become a Software Testing Engineer….Thank you.