Testing the developers, along with the development…

Interesting topic, right? What do you think ?

If you think this is interesting, then lets talk about this a bit more. 

Moving on...

Whenever we are testing a product or development, it is definitely from a development team. As we have been working with this team from long times, we must have some ideas and knowledge about the developers. So, can this awareness affect our testing effort or shall i say, can this awareness benefit us or not?  Lets share some experiences on it.

Knowing the developers or what I can say testing the developers can be advantageous or can be harmful. Lets talk about the benefit and negatives of this by examples.

Lets assume a 'Bug' to be a 'Criticism' (though, a bug is a blessing for me and for all the testers as well).  As a human being, we always do one common mistake. That is called 'Stereotyping'. So, whenever we are being given a new issue or a new feature from a specific developer (Say Developer X), unintentionally sometimes we take it as granted that Developer X tends to make some common mistakes like not thinking of the negative scenarios, spelling mistakes. As a result, we do strict our thinking ability and we loss our enthusiasm to explore for the unwanted things. This is a dangerous thing which affects directly on the curious mind and let it stop to work profoundly.

On the other hand, sometimes it benefits us while we are in a rush to test a some specific issues before release of the product. When you are in hurry what we usually do is finding out the minimal ways to complete the tasks in hand. So, we need to focus on the particular important things. So, if you do some tests focusing on the important parts and keeping in mind that Developer X has done it, then you can find out the most important features which will not be left out for testing before the release or when you are in a hurry.

 I know all the specialists of Testing whom i really follow, will not support this. Actually, i do not like it as well. But, sometimes it comes up through the unconscious mind and i have tried these approach unconsciously. Well, i had some success as well. But, in the long run, it actually limits the broader thinking approach.

So, testers!!! Be aware of this 'Stereotyping' !