{"id":714,"date":"2016-05-24T13:45:09","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T03:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/?p=714"},"modified":"2016-05-24T13:46:51","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T03:46:51","slug":"testing-does-not-prevent-defects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/2016\/05\/24\/testing-does-not-prevent-defects\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing does not prevent defects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be a bunch of discussion regarding whether testers prevent defects or not.<\/p>\n<p>The main source of confusion that I see is confusing &#8216;testers&#8217; with &#8216;testing&#8217;.  Clearing this up seems pretty simple.<\/p>\n<p>Testing does not prevent defects.  Testers may.  I do. But I don&#8217;t call that part of my work &#8216;testing&#8217;, even if testing and experiment design is a part of that work.  Clarifying which aspects of my work are &#8216;testing&#8217; and which are not is important for at least two reasons.<\/p>\n<p>The first, is that I can discuss those skills clearly and keep that knowledge in one place.  This allows me to make shortcut reference to those skills when I apply them in other roles I may be playing.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, time I spend playing some other role that may be about defect prevention (or team\/product alignment, shared focus, or anything else) usually involves (sometimes irreconcilable) tradeoffs in the quality of my testing work or less available time for test effort.  If I&#8217;m not making this clear to stakeholders who matter, or if I am unaware of the potential for conflict, I expose myself to a number of potential problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be a bunch of discussion regarding whether testers prevent defects or not. The main source of confusion that I see is confusing &#8216;testers&#8217; with &#8216;testing&#8217;. Clearing this up seems pretty simple. Testing does not prevent defects. Testers may. I do. But I don&#8217;t call that part of my work &#8216;testing&#8217;, even if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,29,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","category-software-development","category-software-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}