What do you mean you found a bug?
June 11th, 2008 | by David |I was reading on Webmonkey about a defect that was found in what should have been the last release candidate before Firefox 3 is released. Reading between the lines it appears that this was found towards the end of testing. Mozilla hasn’t formally announced a release date for FF3 but people were expecting it shortly. Pretty mundane stuff. It doesn’t appear to have been important enough for Techcrunch to jump all over it. So why the blog post?
Because at my current place of employment finding a defect towards the end of testing will get your abilities as a human being questioned. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard somebody ask “Why wasn’t that found earlier in the testing cycle?” Which makes me want to jump through the phone and scream obscenities that would make Brad Feld blush. The purpose of testing is to find defects, to break stuff. You have a testing window and a plan because it takes time. You don’t test everything on Day 1 and then sit on your ass for the next 3 weeks. You test for the whole 3 weeks (or whatever). To try to make someone feel stupid or less of a tester because they found something at the end of the testing window is asinine. We should be giving out bounties. I’m getting off my soapbox now.
Note to self…when its time to hire a full time QA person for Supplier View, reward them handsomely.
