Programmers and Testers

I used to hear the rivalry between developers and testers from my friends. It is common in IT community. The depth of rivalry depends upon the maturity of both testers and developers. Every tester would have experienced this.

Many programmers are experts and specialized in particular technologies. Their duty involves mostly with complicated things. It might be new technology, new tool or new domain. They are not ready to do routine tasks as testing their code fully for each change. Many developers assumes that testing is an easy job and low end work. Sometime it might go as testing team is the wastage of resources, time and money.

Even if any rivalry occurs, it should be bust quickly. Either developer or tester should not take it personal. At the end, both are working for same goal. I hope, now these assumptions would have come down. Now a days, testers are involving automation framework design, unit testing etc.

Following tophics are listed under Interacting with Programmers in Book: Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Cem Kaner, James back and Bret Pettichord

1. Understanding how programmers think
2. Develop programmer's trust
3. Provide Service
4. Your integrity and competence will demand respect
5. Focus on the work, not the person
6. Programmers like to talk about their work. Ask them questions
7. Programmers like to help with testability

Two weeks back, I was reading Debasis Pradham (Software Testing Zone) blog. Couple of his posts also talking about this feud and how to deal with them.

• Software Testing Diplomacy: A Tester’s Guide on How to Deal with Programmers!
• Does software testing add value to the project?

In Stickyminds.com, I found an article related to this tophic - Across the Great Divide: The Language of Common Ground between Testers and Developers By Susan Joslyn