Programmers, Testers, Users

  Requirements Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Programming and testing are two completely different skills. When it comes to validating that requirements have been met and new issues haven’t been created, programmers need to step away from their own work; testers need to think like users and treat the system like a mystery.

In his “Do Away With QA” series that concluded earlier this year, David Ward said the problem with quality is that the testers are not as talented or smart as the programmers. Ward admittedly said this in a “tongue-in-cheek” way, but he did raise a valid question: what is the problem with quality and testing? 

Prior to becoming a project manager, I spent several years as an application development manager and then as a QA manager. In these roles, I learned that programming and testing are two completely different skills and that the problem with testing and quality isn’t that testers aren’t as smart as programmers; the problem occurs when testers don’t think like users. Let me explain…

The purpose of testing is to validate that what’s been created or changed meets the requirements (does what it’s supposed to do) and doesn’t negatively affect or impact things that were working. In addition, testing must make you aware of potential issues.

To do this effectively and to ensure quality, testers must think like users, …

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