The more one learns about the inner workings of an AUT, the more one may get distracted from logging important bugs.

I saw this happen last week with a fellow teammate. She discovered a search criteria control that didn’t allow the user to search by certain values (e.g., they could search by A, B, D, but not C). Instead of logging a bug, she explained to me why it didn’t work. She was thrilled with her knowledge of countless dev discussions trying to fix the data structure beneath said search control. It was more exciting for her to explain the complex data than to worry about the little users who would not be able to search per their expectations. It was like she was suddenly on the side of the developers…and the users would never understand the complex challenges of making software work. “It’s not a bug, nobody can figure out how to deal with the complex data”.

Huh?

Dumb testers don’t have this problem. If it doesn’t follow the spec, they log it. And that’s the good thing about dumb testers. Be careful with your knowledge.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    So true. I've recently moved to the dark side of the force becoming a dev :) This means now I have to make sure my QA is fresh and not caught up in explanations why things don't work. Better yet, I've begun to slowly spread the awareness amongst devs not to accept things as they are, to admit it when things don't work.

  2. Anonymous said...

    I can so relate to your post !!!
    I have a similar tester in my group who takes pride in helping developers fix their code when he is most wanted to find the remaining issues in the AUT.
    He comes back and tells his fellow testers of how much he dig in to the code and fixed it ,while the dumb tester sitting with admiring eyes are the ones who have tested the application thoroughly.

    Can u pls suggest some tips to deal with such testers?They are quite good,but how can we(testing Community) use thier goodness??

  3. Diego said...

    Yeah, learn from me



Copyright 2006| Blogger Templates by GeckoandFly modified and converted to Blogger Beta by Blogcrowds.
No part of the content or the blog may be reproduced without prior written permission.