12 commitment of testers to developers

Tester’s Commitments

Dear Programmer, My job is to help you look good. My job is to support you as you create quality; to ease that burden instead of adding to it. In that spirit, I make the following commitments to you. Sincerely, Tester

1. I provide a service. You are an important client of that service. I am not satisfied unless you are satisfied.
2. I am not the gatekeeper of quality. I don’t “own” quality. Shipping a good product is a goal shared by all of us.
3. I will test your code as soon as I can after you deliver it to me. I know that you need my test results quickly (especially for fixes and new features).
4. I will strive to test in a way that allows you to be fully productive. I will not be a bottleneck.
5. I’ll make every reasonable effort to test, even if I have only partial information about the product.
6. I will learn the product quickly, and make use of that knowledge to test more cleverly.
7. I will test important things first, and try to find important problems. (I will also report things you might consider unimportant, just in case they turn out to be important after all, but I will spend less time on those.)
8. I will strive to test in the interests of everyone whose opinions matter, including you, so that you can make better decisions about the product.
9. I will write clear, concise, thoughtful, and respectful problem reports. (I may make suggestions about design, but I will never presume to be the designer.)
10. I will let you know how I’m testing, and invite your comments. And I will confer with you about little things you can do to make the product much easier to test.
11. I invite your special requests, such as if you need me to spot check something for you, help you document something, or run a special kind of test.
12. I will not carelessly waste your time. Or if I do, I will learn from that mistake

A Test Leads Commitments (v 0.1)

Dear Tester, My job is to help you look good. My job is to support you as you discover quality; to ease that burden instead of adding to it. In that spirit, I make the following commitments to you.

Sincerely, Your Test Lead

1. I provide a service. You are an important client of that service. I am not satisfied unless you are satisfied.
2. I will trust you to do your job to the best of your ability
3. I will not subject you to needless incentive plans based on arbitrary metrics.
4. I will not impose unnecessary paperwork or force you to do ineffective testing in order to follow a script.
5. If our workplace has some Quality Control system in place that enforces significant paperwork, I will strive to make it as lean as possible and to shoulder as much of the remaining load as possible so that I can leave you to do your work.
6. If you have disagreements with developers I want you to come to me before it becomes a conflict. If a conflict is necessary, it is better they hate me than you.
7. If you wish to improve your skill in the craft, I will make sure you have enough time to do so and I will be available for coaching and/or mentoring.

http://prezi.com/yymvnxbysd9i/a-testers-commitments-by-james-bach/ http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/652 http://richardontesting.blogspot.com/2011/11/test-leads-commitments-v-01.html