Couple of weeks ago, while i was having the monthly one-on-one discussion with my manager, she told me about a new project that was coming up. It looked like there was an opportunity for me and she wanted me to take that up. Taking up this work would mean, i would have to move temporarily to the other team and stop the QA work that i was currently responsible for. The next question, naturally, was who would be owning the piece of work that i was doing?
It quite so happens that at around the same time, there were two new people joining our team. Well, one person was new to the team, the other used to work as a contractor, before he was offered a permanent post. So he was re-joining our team.
I suggested, that we give it to the guy who was re-joining us. I had my valid reasons. He knew the product, knew the people and the process involved etc.. But to my surprise, my manager suggested the new guy. She went on to say that she knew the contractor-turned-permanent-employee to be more of a developer and lacked, what she called as, ‘the tester’s attitude‘.
I have been a QA guy all my career and what she mentioned struck me. What did she mean by a ‘tester’s attitude’?
I always knew that testing was not for everyone. Testing is something that is quite different from development. It’s easy, as well as tough at times. It takes a lot of ‘courage’ to stand up against a veteran developer and fight for that Sev-1 defect that you raised. It takes effort to raise quality defects. One needs to think like a customer or an end user and uncover defects. Testing, it’s an art!
But what did she mean by a tester’s attitude? The thought was nagging me for the last couple of weeks and today i understood what tester’s attitude meant.
