Last week I attended SEETEST in Sofia, Bulgaria. The conference was extremely well-organized, and I learned some new things, such as test automation considerations for testing mobile devices, and coordinating agile testing with compliance requirements. There were also some things said that hit one of my hot buttons: whether testers and programmers ought to work together, versus on separate, siloed teams.
This inspired a rant which I posted (OK, Joey McAllister posted it for me) on my StickyMinds blog entitled Independent Testers? or Independent Thinkers?. I would love to have comments on your experiences with testers and programmers working together.
Coincidentally, the latest Methods and Tools magazine has an article I wrote on Coding and Testing: Programmers and Testers Working Together. In this article I work through an example of how testers and programmers collaborate to develop new features, similar to the examples Janet and I use in our book. Please check it out along with the other interesting articles in Methods and Tools.
I’m working with programmers and testers together more than ever on my new team. Right now we are all on a voice chat, with a shared desktop, writing FitNesse/SWAT tests and code together. (OK, I am really just watching, but I’m learning, and asking questions.)
One comment on “Coders & Testers Together – a Rant and an Article”
Completely agree with you. I have been folloiong your writing for a while now and connect to most of the things you say about Agile testing.
I’ve been on Agile teams since 4 years and have first hand experience working in a ‘developers+ testers’ environment. I think it really beats the ‘developer Vs tester’ setup when it comes to quality, greatest being the fact that we work as a team and there is no animosity between developers and testers. This also leads to collaboration of a higher level, in turn, helping to deliver quality in a conscious manner.