Don’t just Test, be a Tester

In the team I currently work with, we came to the conclusion, that the software contains to many bugs when we think it is finished. Since we don’t have a dedicated tester on the team (I know that is a mistake) we decide to invent the role of “Tester of the Week”. Every week one person would get the title and therefore would be responsible to test everything marked by the other developers as ready for test in a kanban like fashion.

This week it was my turn. Reluctantly I committed to the task in the daily stand up and started testing the application. I found a first bug and a strange thing happened. It felt great to find a bug. I found 11 bugs that day and I felt great about it! Normally when I find a bug this is a demotivational thing for me, because someone (often me) didn’t do his job properly, someone (possibly me) has to find some time to fix this. Not fun.

But being “The Tester” changed the game. It was my task to find bugs. The team agreed that it was a good thing to find bugs. It was fun and felt productive and since I found lots of bugs it was productive.

My recommendation for today: Don’t just do the task, be the one in charge of getting this task done and getting it done well.

Reference: Don’t just Test, be a Tester from our NCG partner Jens Schauder at the Schauderhaft blog.