Testing is best done by ‘Career Testers’ and not ‘Career Developers’

 

The full life cycle of testing services i.e. from requirement analysis; planning; design and development; to execution and reporting is in essence the full lifecycle of software development too. But organizations continue using testing at the end of their software development effort. Organizations that tackle testing in this manner are in the real meaning using testing only as a ‘legalization’ service or should we say as a reactive action. They are using it as a red or a green signal at the end of the development cycle just before cutting the application into production for a customer. 

 

In this approach testing is not used as a way of improving on an on-going manner the quality of the software during its development phase but as a toll gate the customer has insisted the service provider to cross. Reasons could be many. At the very basic level the reason attributed to such an approach, which is very tactical versus the strategic approach most customers demand is the resources used.

 

In most cases when testing is done by software players who want to offer the whole package or by the testing divisions of these full-service providers the testing is done by ‘Career Developers’. That is resources who are into testing as a part of their career ladder because they have been mandated to do so, to get to the place they want in their software developer career. Opposed to this is the ‘Career Tester’ who has chosen testing as his career and does testing of software that is developed by any of the software development service providers. It is a no-brainer to guess who will do a better job on testing your application.