What is the Best Way to Make Developer and QA Relationship Healthy?

Today we will discuss an interesting Software Testing topic which is indeed a hot topic in any organization. Yes as a tester or QA you can guess it, nothing other than Testers vs. Developers.

Testers The Troublemakers

It’s funny, how almost all developers worldwide consider Testers to be the troublemakers.

Actually, it’s not their fault, no one likes to hear faults in his/her own baby. This is the same thing that we (tester) are doing, of course, the intention behind that is to deliver quality output to the client. There is constant bitterness at some point in the game between these two roles.

Wondering why? It’s the genre and responsibility of these two roles.

When the bug count increases or bugs are severe and it’s causing difficulty for the developer to solve that bug, then developer gets frustrated at the count as well as the person. The level of understanding between these two roles conflicts not only in one place but in many areas.

So how can we build a good and understanding relationship between Testers and Developers?

Out of my experience, teamwork and friendship are the best solutions.

If you can be a good friend of the developer then you can challenge him to issues, and for sure that person takes it positively and works better. It’s the responsibility of both to ensure that the ultimate output is to work at its best. Meanwhile, the developers should ensure that there are no bugs out of what they develop.

The testers should ensure that if there are bugs, then those should be given, handled at the correct time and scope, where completion comes in.

When you are a QA, working with a team for a long time, then the relationship between you and developers becomes friendlier.

As a team, you are able to work together in finding defects beforehand, which is always appreciated. Not only that, sitting together in a discussion of designs and solutions can make the developers be aware of the different issues and areas to improve quality, thereby taking the quality mindset a step further.

As a tester, you can find the Defects but it’s always good to share some tactics with the Developers on how to test the application.  This might help the developers to test better before delivering the product. But this can work only if everyone is co-operative enough to look at the final target i.e. “to deliver with quality”.

Share Your Thoughts

What do you think is the best way to make the developers and QA relationship healthy?

A few of my thoughts on this are:

#1) Share your strategy with developers. Don’t keep it in mind thinking that you will mark it as an issue at a later stage.

#2) Try to build friendly relationships with developers, so that they can feel comfortable to share anything with you.

#3) Keep your issue reporting style positive, it should not hurt someone’s feelings.

You might be a developer or QA, feel free to add your thoughts in this discussion. So that our ultimate aim of “delivering quality output” will be achieved together.

About the Author: This is a guest article by ‘Tejaswini Patil’. She is working with an E-learning organization as an Associate Manager QA.

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Also, don’t miss our other interesting read on software testing – Living Life as a Software Tester!