I always find it interesting when people work in a particular job then get promoted into management. It’s a completely different set of skills and if it’s a fair promotion, the idea of getting so good at your job, that you no longer do that job anymore; is another illogical aspect of it.
One thing that always amazes me is when people make decisions that they know are a bad idea from their experience doing the job.
When I worked as a software tester, my view is that we were essentially there to find any bugs that exist. Part of finding them is to document how to recreate the bug so that developers could fix it. Extending this process so it’s more complex, more stages, or involves more people – causes people to not want to find bugs.
There were times where I witnessed people do the bare minimum and they would ignore bugs that didn’t appear severe to them.
One of the worst people I’ve worked with was an average tester who wanted to become a Test Manager, and he ended up trying to make the process more complex and often announced changes in a condescending way.
When testers found a bug and wanted to investigate it, they would often try to recreate it, sometimes under different scenarios to work out the scope and impact of the bug, then will tell a developer their findings and only then get it logged.
Therefore there was a delay between finding the bug and actually logging it. So we got an email from the Test Manager like so:
All,It is important that as soon as you discover a defect, you raise a defect for this BEFORE you speak with the developer. Any defects raised can easily be closed if they have been raised in error or discovered by the developer to not be an issue. We run the risk of releasing with defects that could potentially cause serious issues for our customers.
I understand his point that – if managers are checking the system to see what bugs are outstanding and they don’t see them all, then potentially, the software could end up being released with bugs. However, the process started getting worse from then on:
Please can you include myself and Becky on any emails that are discussing a defect with a developer. This is so that we are both kept updated with any defects that could cause issues. Also for every defect you raise, I’d like an email to myself and Becky with the follow information :
-- WorkItem ID
- Title
- Area
- Any other information you feel relevant.
So now when we discover a bug, we had to log it straight away without the investigation, email two Test Managers, then copy in any further emails to them. Then as more information is known, update the bug report, and making sure we also had an appropriate workaround if the bug did get released (or is already released).
All,When you are filling out the SLA tab for a defect you need to ensure that if you’ve specified that there is a workaround available that the Workaround box is filled in with the Workaround.
If you’ve raised any defect that is a Severity 3 this MUST be fixed before the branch is signed off. This is our exit criteria, we do not sign a release off with any Sev 1, 2s or 3s. if the developer disagrees with this, escalate it to myself and Becky and we’ll deal with it.
Often when we logged a bug, he was either emailing you or comes to your desk to ask why you haven’t triaged it with a developer yet. Sometimes he did that within 10 minutes of you logging it. So he wanted you to log it before triaging, but would then demand that you triage it even if you haven’t had chance to contact an appropriate developer.
You’d also have other test cases to run which he was always on your back to give him constant status reports. It was hard to win because if you have tests to run and have found bugs, then he will want you to triage them but sometimes helping the developer could take hours which means you aren’t testing, so he will be asking why you haven’t run your tests.
That level of micromanaging and demanding updates wasn’t great for morale and also encouraged Software Testers to stop logging the bugs they found because it just added to their own workload and stress.
It seemed better just to steadily get through the tests, but I suppose if you didn’t want to log bugs, then what was the point in actually running the tests? I did suspect some people just marked them as passed and hoped there wasn’t an obvious bug they missed.
Stranger Coding Tings 