Why should testing be independent from developement?

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Permalink Reply by Samir Bharat Gandhi on January 2, 2010 at 12:55pm

With testing team, you can always be sure that there are people who can test your application, knowing that it's their duty, and always gives you the best before you deliver it into the market.

There is always a difference when developer's testing and QA Eng's testing.

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Permalink Reply by Dr M V Ananathakrishnan on January 2, 2010 at 4:50pm

YES. YOU NEED AN INDEPENDENT TESTING TEAM...BECAUSE:

1. THe Development team members tend to be be biassed while testing their own work, which is but expected.
2. THere is a distinct possibility that the development team members might skip or overlook some testing steps presumimg that they hasve been done during development
3. As is the case with large projects, different teams are involved in different components of the overall product. Hence the presumption that the preceding team would have take of it or the succeeding team will attend to it.

Dr M V Ananthakrishnan

Dr Ananthakrishnan

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Permalink Reply by Ajay Singh Baghel on January 2, 2010 at 5:12pm

Agreeing to above points:
For developers - application is their own baby as they have coded it and they are bound to say "My baby is perfect" hence there should be an independent eye to look for problems/issues.
In general tester's one and only responsibility is to find all possible bugs in the application which a developer can skip.

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Permalink Reply by Abhijeet Bhagat on January 2, 2010 at 5:23pm

IV and V
yes It has to be why? Varied reasons.
1. Dedicated Team. No matter what we just test.
2. Independent Perspective. "One Cannot proofread his own writing"
3. Specialized training and attitude to crack defects.Anything that is less than or more Requirement is a Defect.
4. IV and V ensures no biasing and emotional attachment.

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Permalink Reply by Yvette Francino on January 2, 2010 at 6:42pm

Hi Bob,
Here's an article I wrote several years ago about centralizing QA: http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?Function=edetail&Object...

Basically, one advantage of having a centralized QA Team is that the team can share tools, standards, testing best practices, etc. It also might be better from a resource perspective since there are times when projects have their ups and downs requiring cycle time so the test resources can be transitioned to a new project when more efficiently with a centralized group.

All that being said, it's important to keep the relationship between development and test strong, so the testers should basically be a part of the project team, too, even if, organizationally, they report up through the QA organization.

Keeping QA and Development separate provides some autonomy for QA, allowing the QA group to have a separate vote in a go/no-go decision.

All-in-all, as long as the relationship between development and QA remains strong and collaborative, there can be some nice benefits from having an independent QA/Test team...

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Permalink Reply by Bob on January 3, 2010 at 2:36pm

First; all the best for 2010!!

Thank you all for your replies. I will certainly use them in my presentation!

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Permalink Reply by RoselinThomas on January 5, 2010 at 5:03pm

The effectiveness of finding defects by testing and reviews can be improved by using independent
testers. Options for independence are:
o No independent testers. Developers test their own code.
o Independent testers within the development teams.
o Independent test team or group within the organization, reporting to project management or
executive management.
o Independent testers from the business organization or user community.
o Independent test specialists for specific test targets such as usability testers, security testers or
certification testers (who certify a software product against standards and regulations).
o Independent testers outsourced or external to the organization.
For large, complex or safety critical projects, it is usually best to have multiple levels of testing, with
some or all of the levels done by independent testers. Development staff may participate in testing,
especially at the lower levels, but their lack of objectivity often limits their effectiveness. The
independent testers may have the authority to require and define test processes and rules, but
testers should take on such process-related roles only in the presence of a clear management
mandate to do so.
The benefits of independence include:
o Independent testers see other and different defects, and are unbiased.
o An independent tester can verify assumptions people made during specification and
implementation of the system.
Drawbacks include:
o Isolation from the development team (if treated as totally independent).
o Independent testers may be the bottleneck as the last checkpoint.
o Developers may lose a sense of responsibility for quality.
Testing tasks may be done by people in a specific testing role, or may be done by someone in
another role, such as a project manager, quality manager, developer, business and domain expert,
infrastructure or IT operations.

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