Wednesday 27 June 2012

Letter to Developers from Testers !!!!

Hello Mr/Miss Developer !!

Hope you are doing good. I want to tell you few points so that you can understand our point of view. I hope you take time to understand it properly and give some time to analyze the problems we face in the team and how we can resolve it.

1) When i file a bug in your module , please understand that I am not pointing at your coding capabilities. I am just doing my job.

2) When i say "the bug is not reproducible" , please don't smile at me and mark my bug as "works for me". At least try to spend time in analyzing the bug and understand the scenario. Even i understand how it is difficult to fix not reproducible bugs. But i believe by giving you enough information at least you will have better understanding about the module which can create problem.

3) I know sometimes I am not good in filing bugs and i should read this

"http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html" before filing any bug and follow it. But if it is not as per your expectation please reassign me with the

information you want instead of marking it as "invalid"


4) If you think any bug is "Invalid" or "Works as designed" please mention in such a way that i can understand the reason for doing it. If you say in your comment as " works as designed " how i will know what is the expected behavior of the design. Please write explicitly the expectation of the module and how the bug is not valid.

5) If you are fixing any bugs please mention the changes done in the code not only in terms of file names but also in  terms of human readable form. Instead of only giving branch and affected files please mention what exactly you have done in your files.

6) If you have fixed some major bugs please mention what other module it affects or can affect. If you have time to test you can test it or let us know , we will test it no problem.

7) If you are reducing the priority of any bug, please mention the reason for doing it as next time i will be capable enough to understand it what priority should be given to which bug.

Last but not least please don't make any bug as ego issue. If you see from my point of you, i am getting paid to test and break the code. If I am not finding bugs properly i am not doing my job and its immaterial who has written the code. For me bug is more important and not "Who has written the code".

if i miss bug in old build and found the issue in new build, don't blame me for not finding it at first place. If you can understand, it will be like this that every time I go for fishing you ask me why last time you did not get this type of fish even if it is the same sea ? I know the bug has been found late , don't thank me that i have found the issue before customer can find but at least don't blame me for finding it late. Please if you can , go and fix it.

As "no of bugs found by tester"cannot be used to measure performance of testers similarly "no of bugs found" in your module should not be treated as your shortcomings. It is one of the matrix but not the major one. The importance should be given to the resolution and fixing of the issue instead of who has missed the bug  and whose module the bug is found.

Please accept me as a part of you. We are equal. We are working for the same goal, to make products better. The more I help you by finding bugs the more product will be stable. The more you help me in finding bugs by giving details of use case, customer scenario etc the more product will be stable.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

Thanks,
Testers