56
votes
Should Testers first discuss a bug with the developers before writing a bug report?
As a developer with 15+ years experience, I'd say: please report the bug. I'd much rather have a ticket in the tracking system than a vague memory of a hallway conversation, or an interruption of what ...
- 631
44
votes
Accepted
Asking a developer to be explicit about how a bug was fixed
I would operate under the assumption that your developers are documenting this somewhere, since I would also assume that they are good developers who care about good development practices. As a ...
- 2,665
37
votes
Accepted
Is % of escaped defects a good KPI for a tester performance?
In my personal opinion, I think this theory is flawed.
As you stated, there are so many variables that come into play:
% of escaped defects treat all bugs as equal, but they are not. Some bugs are ...
- 9,810
32
votes
Accepted
Actual data for why developers shouldn't be the only ones testing their code?
There doesn't seem to be a lot of research data on this; this is what I found:
Waiting for builds:
This article about "Why software testers can't test" quotes a survey from IBM (The Future of ...
- 32.4k
31
votes
Accepted
How to explain the concept of test automation to a team that only knows manual testing?
Measure it.
Pick a test area, measure how long it takes to test manually, then measure how long it takes to test with automation and how long you spend maintaining your automation. (There are ...
- 23.2k
29
votes
Accepted
One of my team members executed security test without any consent
As Yu Zhang has said NEVER perform security tests without consent. There are no exceptions to this rule.
You need to make it clear to the team member that senior management would be justified in ...
- 31.2k
25
votes
Actual data for why developers shouldn't be the only ones testing their code?
Disclaimer: this answer is purely based on personal, anecdotal experience.
In my 10 years as a Software Developer, I have known 4 different situations:
no tester (besides myself),
tester in another ...
- 361
19
votes
How to explain the concept of test automation to a team that only knows manual testing?
Seems that your boss (correctly) understands that to write automated test takes longer that perform the same test manually once, and is concerned that you will spend so much time automating you will ...
19
votes
How to convince project managers that onboarding a tester early is important?
In this situation - unfortunately - your best option is the slow and painful method. I've used it as a general tester, and for test automation.
The way I approach this is to use these techniques:
...
- 31.2k
19
votes
Accepted
How to deal with or prevent idle in the test team?
"there is nothing to test"
That is a strong statement.
I like to use James Bach's definition of testing:
Testing is the process of evaluating a product by learning about it
through exploration ...
- 10.2k
18
votes
Accepted
How do you determine that your project's quality has increased over time?
A good starting point is to define what quality means in your context. And then find out ways how to measure it. It seems you want to measure something without saying what that something is.
Having ...
- 4,488
17
votes
Good practices to audit test automation code
As others have said: code review.
It is not uncommon for code like assert true == true to be used as a placeholder during test automation development (I personally would use assert true == false or ...
- 31.2k
16
votes
Should Testers first discuss a bug with the developers before writing a bug report?
In my own experience, I've found that this really depends on the culture of the team or company that you're working with.
On a team with good communication skills, and where everyone works together ...
- 6,106
14
votes
One of my team members executed security test without any consent
Security tests should be only executed with a written customer's consent.
Your team member's intention might not have been malicious but due to its highly sensitive nature of software security, all ...
- 9,810
14
votes
Asking a developer to be explicit about how a bug was fixed
Request a meeting between upper management of QA and DEV and explain the goals of what you are asking. I think the description you provided in the question is a good start at explaining the why of the ...
- 288
14
votes
Should Software Testers say that functionality is "working fine" or should they say that "it seems/appears to working fine or looks good"?
It depends
What matters is that you are able to effectively communicate the current state of the software in test to your leads and management. How you communicate that information will depend on ...
- 31.2k
14
votes
Is % of escaped defects a good KPI for a tester performance?
The short, simple answer: No
The slightly more nuanced answer: It can be, but you have to be very careful
The real explanation: Like most other candidates for tester performance KPIs, escaped ...
- 31.2k
13
votes
How to explain the concept of test automation to a team that only knows manual testing?
Proving the ROI of automated testing is hard. Teams that do refactoring to keep code lean and mean do have a high demand for test automation.
Watch the first episode of Clean Code, it will give you ...
- 32.4k
13
votes
How to deal with a lead developer who questions every action or process suggested by QA lead?
I think this is a delicate topic in the software industry, one that I have experienced in the past.
Essentially what I did was have a one-on-one conversation with the person and tried to bring it up ...
- 1,190
12
votes
Should Testers first discuss a bug with the developers before writing a bug report?
We prefer to talk to developers first. Then, we together decide if detected error is a result of some quirk in processing and not even worth of bug, or, if it is worth a bug, we negotiate who will ...
12
votes
Should Testers first discuss a bug with the developers before writing a bug report?
Do not discuss defects immediately with developers. Mainly because context switching is bad for their focus and could take up to 5-30 minutes to recover from.
How to communicate a defect depends in ...
- 32.4k
12
votes
Should Testers first discuss a bug with the developers before writing a bug report?
I think, it is always good to discuss things in person. You are lucky you have that things going on at your work place. In many companies all communication happens only via a system and that at times ...
- 121
12
votes
Actual data for why developers shouldn't be the only ones testing their code?
TL;DR: Devs write own unit tests. If you want different eyeballs to look at the unit tests code, code review is the answer.
EDIT: OP clarified question: it is about e2e tests. For e2e tests, using ...
11
votes
Accepted
Implementing the Test Pyramid as QA
I am definitely using the test pyramid as one of my 'guidance' tools.
I frequently combine it with the 4 Agile Testing quadrants in talks and presentations.
&...
- 24.9k
11
votes
One of my team members executed security test without any consent
The fact that this thing happened means that there is something wrong in the security testing processes inside your team. At least, there should have been an agreement/consent between both parties - a ...
- 11.4k
10
votes
Different testing approaches for different teams?
As Bookeater says, you absolutely want to unify tools and processes between the teams. That said, I'm going to offer some extra advice because I've been in this situation (and to some extent I am ...
- 31.2k
10
votes
Accepted
Ideal size for a QA team
You're going to get all kinds of recommendations on QA team sizes, from zero to twice the number of developers, or higher. The right number for you depends on what you need to test, what kind of ...
- 23.2k
10
votes
Accepted
Changing testing culture in the company
There has to be some sort of pain point to make Management and front-line employees aware of the need for testing. How your company does that depends on how mission or life-critical the software truly ...
- 1,011
10
votes
How to deal with or prevent idle in the test team?
In addition to some of the other suggestions, you could consider a few other options:
Build/run load tests for new/recent work (given the maturity of your test automation you may already have this ...
- 31.2k
9
votes
Should Testers first discuss a bug with the developers before writing a bug report?
Should Testers first discuss the bug with the developers before reporting it?
From my experience in several different organizations I think the answer given the current question details is "it ...
- 24.9k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible