I was following a discussion about tester - developer collaboration, when a realisation hit me. Most of us testers have interesting relationships with the developers.
Back when I started testing, the relationships were mostly adversial. From those times, we've created a lot of folklore we still keep on repeating on testing courses, sometimes giving significant amount of time to experiences unknown to the newcomers. I've had people look at me weirdly when talking about some of the pre-agile testing experiences they've never experienced.
Adversial relationships still exist. There's still experiences where developers tell the tester that they are "more valuable than you" - quoting one of my developer colleagues from 2,5 years ago. There's managers who will pay testers less than developers like Marlena Compton just mentioned in her blog post. And there's podcast-authors who still like to quote Joel Spolsky's ancient view into testers as cheaper labour. Testers share advise on how to speak to developers about bugs without hurting the developers feelings. And some developers are more easily hurt than others.
I find that most of my relationships with developers nowadays are no longer adversial. It could be that I work with particularly nice people, who value my contribution. It could be that I've learned to contribute more valuable information over the years.
The thing I realised from the discussion I followed is that many testers with positive relationships with developers still have just that one special developer they think back to as someone they wish they could have worked with more. Many testers don't have even one. There're the tester-developer -relationship where you co-exist for a common goal. And then there's the tester-developer -relationship where you collaborate, build on one another in a way that makes it hard to say who contributed what, but you both know that what you create together is better.
I was thinking back to the one special developer that I wish I could work with. He would take an idea of what I could test, and take it further, improving the code and adding test automation, all before I needed to execute a test. We were not only friends at work, but we were friends who finished the other's sentences. He was interested in what I saw as testing. I was interested in what he was working on as developing. It did not feel forced. It felt genuine.
There's been a lot of great testers I love working with, to same extent as this one special developer. But it feels so often that developers are a different breed, with different interests. My developers look at me all funny when I find a really cool bug and do little jumps up and down on the ingeniousness of something that no one could have created intentionally. And I look at them all funny when they're in love with yet another API that they find so cool. We understand enough to co-exist and like one another, but the energy is lower. Interests are elsewhere, there's a limited common ground.
I find that testers as group are often paying attention to trying to understand the developer world and mindset. And I find that the one special developer on my mind was one that paid a lot of attention to the tester world.
With a great experience in mind, it's time to go from one special developer to more. I'm hoping that an autumn on mob programming with my team will create more of this experience for me: mutual understanding.
Back when I started testing, the relationships were mostly adversial. From those times, we've created a lot of folklore we still keep on repeating on testing courses, sometimes giving significant amount of time to experiences unknown to the newcomers. I've had people look at me weirdly when talking about some of the pre-agile testing experiences they've never experienced.
Adversial relationships still exist. There's still experiences where developers tell the tester that they are "more valuable than you" - quoting one of my developer colleagues from 2,5 years ago. There's managers who will pay testers less than developers like Marlena Compton just mentioned in her blog post. And there's podcast-authors who still like to quote Joel Spolsky's ancient view into testers as cheaper labour. Testers share advise on how to speak to developers about bugs without hurting the developers feelings. And some developers are more easily hurt than others.
I find that most of my relationships with developers nowadays are no longer adversial. It could be that I work with particularly nice people, who value my contribution. It could be that I've learned to contribute more valuable information over the years.
The thing I realised from the discussion I followed is that many testers with positive relationships with developers still have just that one special developer they think back to as someone they wish they could have worked with more. Many testers don't have even one. There're the tester-developer -relationship where you co-exist for a common goal. And then there's the tester-developer -relationship where you collaborate, build on one another in a way that makes it hard to say who contributed what, but you both know that what you create together is better.
I was thinking back to the one special developer that I wish I could work with. He would take an idea of what I could test, and take it further, improving the code and adding test automation, all before I needed to execute a test. We were not only friends at work, but we were friends who finished the other's sentences. He was interested in what I saw as testing. I was interested in what he was working on as developing. It did not feel forced. It felt genuine.
There's been a lot of great testers I love working with, to same extent as this one special developer. But it feels so often that developers are a different breed, with different interests. My developers look at me all funny when I find a really cool bug and do little jumps up and down on the ingeniousness of something that no one could have created intentionally. And I look at them all funny when they're in love with yet another API that they find so cool. We understand enough to co-exist and like one another, but the energy is lower. Interests are elsewhere, there's a limited common ground.
I find that testers as group are often paying attention to trying to understand the developer world and mindset. And I find that the one special developer on my mind was one that paid a lot of attention to the tester world.
With a great experience in mind, it's time to go from one special developer to more. I'm hoping that an autumn on mob programming with my team will create more of this experience for me: mutual understanding.
