Developers are not always good testers

You may have encountered situations where your manager says the requirement is extremely urgent, and there's no time for the QA process. As a result, you're asked to handle testing during development and deploy directly to production.

What we missing here ?

Developers may not always excel as testers because they might lack the specialized experience and skill set needed for thorough testing. To fully grasp this, we need to consider how developers approach their work. When requirements are presented, developers typically focus on building a solution that meets the specified functionality, thinking from a "how to make this work" perspective. Their mindset is often solution-oriented, aiming to implement features and meet deadlines.

However, this approach can sometimes overlook edge cases, potential failures, or non-functional requirements such as performance and security. Developers are generally driven by the need to ensure their code runs as expected, while testers are trained to think critically, anticipate what could go wrong, and explore various scenarios to ensure robustness.

Testing indeed requires a different skill set from development, and there are several reasons why developers often miss these skill sets:

Mindset Difference: Developers are generally focused on how to make the code work as expected. Their goal is to solve the problem and implement the required functionality. This solution-driven mindset contrasts with testers, whose primary objective is to identify weaknesses, potential issues, and edge cases. Developers think about how things should work, while testers think about how things could fail.

Time Pressure: Developers often work under tight deadlines, pushing them to prioritize delivering features over thoroughly testing their code. This can lead to missed edge cases, performance issues, or unexpected bugs in real-world scenarios.

Bias and Familiarity: Developers are naturally biased toward their own code and may overlook potential flaws because they understand how it's supposed to work. This familiarity can sometimes prevent them from thinking about unexpected use cases or failure scenarios that a fresh pair of eyes would catch.

Lack of Specialized Skills: Testing requires skills in areas like exploratory testing, creating comprehensive test cases, understanding user experience, and knowing how to test performance, security, and integration points. Developers, unless trained, may not have these specialized skills.

Can Developers Think Like Testers?

It is possible to encourage developers to adopt a more tester-like mindset, though it requires a deliberate shift in approach:

Educate on Testing: Training developers in the fundamentals of testing can help them think beyond the "happy path." This could involve teaching them about unit testing, integration testing, exploratory testing, and the importance of edge cases, as well as focusing on areas like security, performance, and usability.

Encourage Test-Driven Development (TDD): TDD encourages developers to write tests cases before writing code. By doing this, developers are forced to think about the test cases and how their code will be used in various scenarios. This encourages a more holistic approach to development that includes testing considerations.

Pair Programming with Testers: Pairing developers with QA testers during development can help expose them to the tester’s mindset. Developers can learn how testers approach a system and start incorporating some of those thought processes into their work.

Define Clear Testing Responsibilities: While developers may not replace QA, you can encourage them to take ownership of certain types of testing, such as unit and integration testing. By holding them accountable for ensuring their code passes a certain standard of quality, you push them to think beyond just coding.

Incorporate Edge Case Thinking: Encourage developers to ask questions like:

• What happens if the input is invalid?

• How does the system behave under extreme conditions (e.g., high traffic, low memory)?

• What happens if a network call fails?

• What if a user interacts with the system in an unexpected way?

Cross-Functional Involvement: Involving developers in user acceptance testing (UAT) or bug triaging sessions can give them a better understanding of real-world issues that their code might encounter, helping them improve the way they think about testing in the future.

Is It Possible?

While it is possible for developers to adopt a more testing-oriented mindset, it’s important to recognize that they may never be able to completely replace the critical role that QA plays. Testing is a specialized field for a reason, and trying to make developers fully responsible for it could compromise the depth and quality of testing. However, by promoting a culture of shared responsibility for quality, training, and encouraging collaboration between developers and testers, you can help bridge the gap and improve overall product quality.

References

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/developers-are-not-good-testers-really/