Picture by ChatGPT

On ignoring the recommendations and quality

Let me start with a story.

Imagine a person coming to the doctor with a problem.
The doctor examines a patient, does an analysis (conducts tests, by the way), and comes to a conclusion.

Based on this conclusion, the doctor provides a list of treatments.
So, the doctor gives the patient information about the current state of an organism (conclusion) and provides possible solutions (list of prescriptions). Also, the doctor may talk about potential risks if the patient ignores those recommendations.

Here lies the question - is it a doctor’s responsibility if the patient ignores the prescription and chooses not to be treated at all?
The doctor can’t control whether the person uses prescribed medicine. (Despite the case if the person is in the hospital).

So, if a patient deliberately chooses NOT to be treated, they take responsibility for possible risks to his health. In this case, a person can not say that the doctor “did not provide quality treatment.”. The doctors did the job well.

The same thing happens in the software industry.

Managers, developers, and even testers often claim that the QA engineers’ primary responsibility is to “assure” quality.

On the one hand - maybe they’re right.

But on the other hand, it is nearly impossible to assure quality only by yourself - when management or a team ignores all your information or recommendations.

So, to continue my previous post, the main goal of a test engineer - is to provide information, recommend improvements, and highlight the risks.

But when the project is merrily galloping into the abyss, and the team chooses to postpone the quality no matter what - do not blame the tester for all quality problems. It was a conscious decision. The team (or management) took this responsibility and risk.

What we, as testers, can do - is to make a rescue plan on how to improve quality over time.

P.S. There are some times when managers or tech leads are unaware of the consequences of bad quality. The test engineers’ job is to explain it. So, testers - help your team! Provide examples, draw visuals, use analogies!

P.P.S. The more mature team you work with, the fewer explanations you need on why quality matters.