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I am sure this has been discussed before but what is the testers main role?
Is a testers main job to find bugs?
I would say that the majority of testers do more than just find bugs. They might execute test cases, build automation scripts and more.
But if you just found bugs, do you think you would have completed what your job is?
In a nut shell, a software tester is employed to finding and fixing bugs in programming and coding.
So, what is a bug, and how can we define bugs?
Here, the software tester will then need to understand:
1. What is the ultimate purpose of the software, or what is the Statement of Requirement? If what is being designed and deployed, it doesn’t seem to answer the Statement of Requirement, the software tester need to raise this and to revamp the whole work.
2. What is the main purpose of the development, is it the invoice, or is it the software efficiency? Which one ranked higher of priority? If we want to make changes to the invoice, then if we found out the test code there is a huge space for code efficiency improvement, we need to ensure the first objective can be made, before we think of whether to improve the code efficiency changes is something we can do at the same time window, or we need to do it at a later stage.
The bug is called a bug, due to various reasons. The software tester will need to be more customer focus. He/She will need to be always conscious of what he/she is doing, in order to be more value added to his role.
I would rather rephrase it like “A tester’s primary task is to find bugs”.
@ronan as you already mentioned majority of testers do more than just finding bugs. They might execute test cases, build automation scripts and more.A Testers “Main Job” is to improve quality of the software being tested.
A testers activity (one of many) is to find bugs.
A Testers “Main Job” is to improve quality of the software being tested.
I agree. It is not just finding bugs but also give suggestions and help in improving the overall end user experience.
Other activities like test cases and documentation are to simply help in the above objective
A Testers “Main Job” is to improve quality of the software being tested.
A testers activity (one of many) is to find bugs.
I think you are right here. This is the (right) argument many testers would make.
I wonder though do management think differently about what testers do?
Find bugs is part of the work towards the main objective: Improve the Quality of the Product. The Quality of the Product can be assess in terms of: Usability, Functionality, Reliability, etc.
For the management perspective I think they know that find bugs is not the main task of the tester but one of many, they assess productivity in terms of bugs, quality of final product, feedback from clients, etc. Of course it would be a bit awkward if no bugs were found during testing and after the product is released to clients a lot of bugs start to be reported by them.
A some companies probably yes. But giving special rewards pr. bug have the effects of more bugs and less success. Also consider the feedback some testers gets when all they find is bugs – that they don’t benefit to the solution of the customers problem and nor the the success of the team (wrt. deadlines etc).
In other contexts the testers job is to dive the test cases: write them, execute them and handle findings. The focus is more on confirming requirements and finding differences towards the specification – if any.
More stories emerge with less and less focus on defect management. That they aren’t even logged, just fixed right of the bat. Maybe even by the tester.
To me test testing mindset is about finding information that hinders the project and hinders the success of the solution.
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