More on dev-tester relations

Matt Heusser has continued discussion of tester-developer relations, where Jonathan Kohl describes the flipside of testers telling developer’s that their automation code sucks.

Actually there are many scenarios, derived from at least a few properties –

– Does the person doing the automation know/not know that their code sucks.
– Is the code ‘suckage’ pointed out by a third party, or the person writing it.
– Is the automation being done by a tester or a developer?

You can plot these out as a truth table and see where you fit. I tend to be automating, saying “I would love some help with this”, but can’t get help or chances to pair with developers. I’ve also observed testers wanting to pair with developers, but developers not wanting to come down to the tester’s skill level or work with their tools (as well as the case I mentioned in my previous post).

I’m sure situations also exist where the testers aren’t interested in working with the developers and learning.

So we have a model that contains –

– the feedback
– the source of the feedback
– awareness of the current state
– receptiveness to feedback
– desire or ability of one of the parties to change the situation.

Has anyone experienced any of the other permutations of these properties?