测试人员与开发人员的沟通

Sticky ToolLook采访了Ranorex 测试自动化专家Christoph Preschern ，讨论关于测试与开发人员的沟通问题：

 

Sticky ToolLook Interview
Tester-developer Communication with Christoph Preschern

In this month's Sticky ToolLook interview, Ranorex test automation expert Christoph Preschern discusses the importance of communication between testers and developers, especially when it comes to choosing the tools that both will use.

Sticky ToolLook: What are some of the benefits to keeping developers and testers on the same page on a project?

Christoph Preschern: The biggest problem when separating testers from developers is the time spent on communication. Communication and collaboration is key. Typically, when a tester starts to test a new piece of software, the developer may have already started a new project. Therefore, when a tester reports a critical bug, it takes more time for the developer to fix it, because he or she has already switched to a new project. This is especially critical when thinking about agile software development processes. In agile software development, it is required that we communicate and to react much faster. If a tester is involved much earlier within a software development process, he or she is able to see everything from another perspective, which could help to avoid bugs before the first line of code is written.

Related to automated testing through the user interface, we must uniquely address controls, such as buttons or text fields on the screen. In many situations, testers can inform developers of which attribute values or IDs of a button they should define in order to make test automation a lot easier.

 

STL: What are some ways to make that communication happen, especially when building automated tests?

 

CP: Both teams (testing and development) have to be able to work on and use the same test automation framework. In order to build such a framework, we must use tools that are accepted by testers and developers. Developers are not really happy about learning new proprietary scripting technologies, especially in times where modern programming languages like C# or Java are state of the art. So, they need the ability to have a powerful automation library, which can be used within their development environment, too.

On the opposite side, many times testers do not have the skills in writing automation code. Their focus is more on how the test case is designed. So, testers need not only the ability to create and adapt robust test automation modules through recordings but also to combine them with existing code blocks--provided by the developers--in order to build reliable test cases.

 

STL: What stumbling blocks should organizations look out for, regarding developer-tester communication?

 

CP: First of all, it is very important that both teams have the chance to talk to each other--and not only in official meetings. And, it's difficult to force communication when they are located in different locations. Secondly, there is no education typically available for testers comparable to that of software development engineers. With this in mind, it may be beneficial to offer new testing jobs to your development team before hiring testers who are totally new to an organization. Finally, don't force the teams to use tools for test automation that they have not evaluated on their own. It is imperative to give them the chance and the responsibility to choose the tool that helps to get the best out of test automation for both teams.