Do you sit with developers at work?

[Paul]

I’d be interested to know if testers and developers are sitting together at work or does the dev team and test team tend to be kept apart?

How does it work where you are working?

[Jesper]

it depends.

Some projects the developers sit in the same room as the testers. Sometimes the testers sit in another room. Sometimes the developers sit in China or Philippines and the testers in Denmark, sometimes it’s the other way around. but we are not a software shop, but more of a solutions shop. So sometimes the developers are actually more business consultants customizing a COTS tool, while the testers are often actual end users. I know a very successful company that delivers complex software but everyone works at home, from across the globe in small distributed teams.

Does it really matter that much nowadays?

[stefan]

I also would say it depends what projects you’re working on.
Usually testers and dev’s sit in some semi-permanent places, but not working together on the same projects all the time.

Scenario 1: Consider 10 dev teams(20p) & 1 test team(3p). Unless all the developers are sitting all in a circle around the testers it’s not possible to be in the same sitting place.
Scenario 2: Add to the 10 dev teams above another 10 dev teams & to the test team another 4 teams. Then spread the members over 5-6 countries. Anyone can work with anyone. Guess what happens? Well, everyone is sitting in their place and maybe work with one or more of the devs that are nearest to them from all the projects they are part of.

[Cristi]

I’ve been in both situation: when dev team was separated by testing team and also when i was designated as a tester for one team (my team)… working together with deLvs is much better in my opinion.

[Paul]

So where dev teams and test teams are separated – is communication as effective as it would be face-to-face? How is communications between dev and test managed?

[Martin]

Paul,

Yes I do sit amidst developers at work and for the most past that is definitely a good thing and certainly fits the modern views of how development and test should work alongside each other collaboratively. Unfortunately within my organisation I have to deal with some developers who have a very non-collaborative mindset and for that reason I might as well sit apart.

Regards,
Martin

[Kasper]

I have been lucky enough to work closely with the devs for most of my testing career.
If the teams are physically at the same building / floor, the testers sit with the developers.
If the team is distributed we use voip, im, video conferencing etc. to recreate being in the same room the best we can.

[Paul]

@martinp, how do you work with these developers given their non-collaborative approach? Is there direct communication or an intermediary e.g. a project manager?

[Craig Lynch]

My team and I (4 staff total) work directly with 2 separate development teams (approx 8 staff in each)

We are all accommodated together with the furthest on-site developer being 2 banks of desks away (and well within shouting distance!).

There is direct verbal communications available for on-site staff while the off-site staff are connected via lync (including VOIP).

The largest challenge I face is ensuring off-site testers (predominantly offshore) understand that direct communication is actively encouraged as a good thing.

[Miguel Angel]

I´m currently in the early stages of a new project and the PM decided to group both developers and testers on the same zone of the office for the first time.

This allows me to hear and participate on discussions about new functionalities, suggestions and stay tuned on project updates that otherwise i would receive via e-mail or summarized (losing some information, for sure).

[Jinxu]

I am very interesting in this topic, We are now still use waterfall, so all the tester sit together and developer around us. as tester, we are happy, we can communicate very easily, and it seems we have more to communicate among the testers. we share a lot of knowledge on how to test.

.However, we are going to use SCRUM, in SCRUM, is it better the the testers sit with developer to make a “team” or should we keep the testers sit together?

[Paul]

We ARE developers. I think the question should be “do you sit with coders at work?”. Some developers focus on creating code and some developers focus on testing that code. the boundaries can be well defined or they can be blurry to the point of disappearing. But we’re all Developers.

[Daria]

Comparing different project I had, ‘sitting’ together decreased time we spent on task. Usually you spend most time to describe the problem, creating a proper example and so on. I don’t say that sitting together is the best way, but I like brainstorming in any time 🙂

[Paul]

Is there anyone who thinks that testers and developers should work separately? That sitting together might be a bad thing? It would be interesting to hear from the developers (or coders as Paul mentioned)…

[Jesper]

Now the trick is to find a context where that would be beneficial – to seperate testers and developers from sitting together… I can only think of command and control organisations. That aren’t really beneficial in the long run, as we know now. Yet, some of them are out there driving projects to the lowest common denominator.

[Archana]

I too believe that testers and developers should sit together. Cannot think of a situation where sitting together could possibly be a bad thing…

[Jesper]

BTW: Unity has a lot of globally distributed teams, and seems to have great success in delivering a great product and attracting great people. Globally diverse teams aids in bringing in the best candidates, I guess.

[John]

Of course we do. It is quite hard to provide them with proper feedback while you are sitting in different rooms or even floors.

[Author]

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