Tester's Musings

That's why i have since veered away from "who made the mistake". It evolved into: "there is an issue" observed in the product under test -- which is due for "further fixing" -- and fix it / retest it, everyone definitely gets a hand doing. How we got that issue in the first place is a matter of retrospective (or introspective, for very very small teams 😅 ). Consonance between the tester's perspective and the BA's understanding of the product/feature(s) is actually under the tester's purview. Where the tester's questioning puts the BA on edge, that is one weak spot in the product development. That is why as an in-house tester, i don't limit myself to just chats with Devs. I go ask BA's, PO's -- just about anybody that can help answer my queries -- about their expectation of the product/feature under test. And then report any expectation incongruences so we can iron out a wholistic view of what is expected of the feature/prod...

  So why hire a tester? It really will depend on what the tester would bring to the table.  In the case of his coffee, if he is asking "will this sell to the masses?" then what he needs is a test of its appeal to the masses. And this means he can't be hiring one, but many testers of that specific taste profile, to get a probable evaluation representative of the target demographic's response. If he is looking for an evaluation of the coffee's "avant-gardeness" then he would need to employ a coffee connoisseur. With the connoisseur's provable taste grade, one coffee tester will do; but a duo or trio independent of each other would add more depth to the coffee evaluation at hand, providing better results.   When a Designer tests, he/she will invariably test for design flaws; designers can't help it, it's their thing -- part of their set of heuristics that make them who they are.  When a CEO runs a test, his/her background (tech or otherwise) wil...