Coming from a small business development background, I’ve always come across management putting emphasis on product creation instead of quality control. Unlike in the realm of big business where they have money trees, there are always competing factors fighting for attention. There are budgets to adhere to, timelines to meet. Does wanting a dedicated tester signal to my boss that my coding skill is bad? How would you convince management without damaging yourself in the process?
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Top comments (7)
I'd say timing plays into it. If you can say it at a time that coincidence with obviously great work you're doing, that will help.
If you frame it in terms of overall productivity gains because it's the work engineers are de facto doing themselves anyway it could also help.
So you mean productivity gains in terms of less developer bias? Or just more time coding? Is a dedicated tester really the right choice? Would it just be better having two developers and test with half their time?
At a certain point you want someone involved that is distanced from the day to day to highlight risk for your team. Your team can certainly do this as well but their main focus should be on building. A person outside of the team can be a little more impartial and communicate/advocate for extra work in specific areas. It's up to the business to determine if the risk vs reward makes sense for features and hiring an individual role to assess this risk.
Not to sound mean, but quality assurance in my view is a responsibility; not a role.
There is nothing stopping you from writing automated tests to ensure quality, in fact that's what you should be doing anyway as a software professional.
If I owned a small business I would 100% expect my developers to take ownership of quality.
Now if the business does not give you the time to do these things, it's their problem if the quality of the product suffers.
So still more inclined to have developers do testing instead of having dedicated staff. The issue here is not so much quality nor time allocation. But is to discuss the best strategy to enable our managers. You shouldn’t think of your managers as enemies.
I believe testing/QA is a collective responsibility yes. In larger organisations you may have need for specialised people who dedicate more time to it. In a small business I wouldn't hire a "tester".
I didn't mean to give that impression!
Doesn’t that depend on the definition of small business? In some jurisdictions, small business is less than 15 employees, in others less than 50 employees. I wouldn’t go so far as to rule out dedicated testers here.
But in any case, the question then becomes at what point is a dedicated person more valuable, if at all?