Saturday
Nov152008
How testers can practice bug advocacy with developers
Saturday, November 15, 2008 at 9:52AM
A while ago I answered the following question on SearchSoftwareQuality.com’s Ask The Software Quality Expert: Questions & Answers.
Here is a clip from my answer:
You can find the full posting here.
What do you do when you find a defect and send it to the developer, but he will not accept that it is a defect? How can we prove that it is a defect?
Here is a clip from my answer:
The Association for Software Testing has a course on bug advocacy you can take for free as a member. In a recent blog post on the topic , Jon Bach provided some links to some of the updated course materials. Look at the slides and what some of the videos in the links he provides. There's a ton of great information in there even if you're just doing self-study.
You can find the full posting here.
Reader Comments (2)
Mike, there's one important thing that I would add to a short answer to this question - clarify who you're working for, and who the decisionmaker is for the bugs. It's rarely as simple as the developer making the final decision. You might need to work harder to convince the developer that there is a bug, or you might need to convince a project manager that it's a high-priority issue, or you might need to convince a test manager that it's reproducible, etc. Make sure you're giving it the level of effort that your sponsor/boss/client is asking for, and escalate to them if necessary.
+1 to Danny's comment. You don't have to convince the developer of whether something is a bug, because the developer isn't (usually) the person who owns that decision. The decision to fix a bug is a business decision, not merely a technical one. The decision as to what work to do next is ultimately a business decision, not merely a technical one. So the developer is probably not the person to make the decision about what is--and is not--a bug.
Cheers,
---Michael B.