Sometimes testers and developers are at odds. Imagine that you work with a group of people who, day after day, tell you every little thing you do wrong.  This doesn’t work; that doesn’t work.  This is the wrong color; that has the wrong font size. They nitpick and nitpick, and seem to make it their goal in life to make sure that it looks like you can’t do anything right.  As a software QA professional, I have to assume that’s how some developers feel.

So, why do some developers have a hard time getting along with QA?  To me, the answer is easy: we spend all of our time telling them everything they do wrong.  We focus on the problems and rarely – if ever – tell them they’ve done something right.  I can image that would grate on a developer after a time.  Especially if the tester has an attitude about it, and believe me – some of them do.

Some developers and testers feel as though they are in competition with each other, when they should realize they’re a team, working toward the same goals.   In the case of software, the goal is to release as good a product as possible, in the shortest time possible, while meeting all requirements, and with the least amount of bugs.

So why do developers and QA actually have a hard time getting along?  Because they’re looking at their relationship the wrong way.  Instead of a developer feeling as though the tester is making them look bad, they should realize the truth:  If a tester does their job right, they make developers look like rock stars.  The application they developed runs smoothly, users report few issues, and the application is a success. Achieving that goal takes a team effort, though.