Survey Results - Do dedicated testers reduce total debugging time?

Those whose attitude matches the 2nd option had better not be in my team, if you even consider it reasonable to allow bugs into the wild you need sacking.

All Q/A and testers are a complete PITA but if you have them then be bloody thankful they are there. You need to regularly buy them a beer as an apology for the times you growl at them when they locate yet another bug.

Q/A and testers, like BAs and PMs are essential to getting a product to your users that does the job they expect and doesn't fall over when some dipstik user starts clicking random buttons because they are there!

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH

You could select option 2 as something true, the fact that in the end you do more debugging because more bugs are found, and yet be thankful you have these testers to find the bugs ahead of the customer. My testers sometimes do really "stupid" things to try to break the software, so stupid that it goes well beyond what customers may do (our customers being professionnals trying to do a job, not users that just like to play with the software).

I agree that testers are a PITA, and that we should be thankful for that. Smile | :)

In general though, I agree more with option 1. Finding bugs early does reduce the overall debugging time, even though more bugs are found in the end.

The second option is not helpful: that is the whole idea of testing, whether dedicated testers are used or not - to find bugs before they escape to the wild and your users find them.

I would say that it is a lot more important to find the damn things as early as possible than to worry about how long it takes to fix them!

The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.

English doesn't borrow from other languages.
English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.

...but it's far better if someone inside finds bugs than customers.

Another, but closely related topic is quality and dedication of testers.

Mislim, dakle jeo sam.

Option	Votes	%
Yes, total debugging time decreases with dedicated testers	712	54.02
No, debugging time increases because the dedicated testers find many more bugs than your customers	359	27.24
I don't see a difference	247	18.74
Total	1,318	100%