Article archive

Story type: Tester got blamed

The Defect Triage Vote

Testing raised a critical defect. The delivery manager suggested deciding the severity by a vote. Five members of the delivery team voted to downgrade it. The tester voted to keep it critical. The defect reached production and caused a critical incident. Testing was asked why it had agreed to downgrade it.

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The Vendor Environment

The supplier demonstrated the system perfectly in its own environment. When testing found defects in ours, the supplier said they were caused by our configuration. We asked what configuration was different. They said that information was commercially sensitive.

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The Known Business Rule

A production issue revealed a business rule nobody had mentioned. The business lead said it was common knowledge. I asked where it was documented. He said it did not need to be documented because everyone knew it.

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The Sign-Off Template

The project manager sent me the release document. It already said: QA APPROVED He asked me to add my name underneath. I refused because testing had not approved the release. He removed the space for my name. He left QA APPROVED where it was.

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The Retrospective Action

The retrospective agreed that testing needed to be involved earlier. The action was assigned to me. The next sprint’s design meetings happened without me. At the following retrospective, the project manager asked why my action was still outstanding. I said nobody had invited me. He said I needed to be more proactive.

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The UAT Expert

The business nominated its most experienced user to complete UAT. She delegated it to a new starter. The new starter passed everything because she did not know how any of it was supposed to work. After go-live, the experienced user said no real user would follow those processes. Testing was asked why it had allowed […]

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The Updated Acceptance Criteria

I demonstrated that the feature did not meet the acceptance criteria. The product owner opened Jira during the meeting. He changed the acceptance criteria. Then he refreshed the screen and showed that the feature now met them.

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The Consensus Decision

At release readiness, Development said yes. Product said yes. Operations said yes. Testing said no. The chair announced that there was consensus to proceed. I asked what consensus meant. He said, “Most people agree.” After the release failed, the meeting minutes said all teams had supported the decision.

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The Approved Test Plan

I sent the project manager the test plan. Four minutes later, he approved it. Three weeks later, he asked why data migration had not been tested. I showed him the section saying it was excluded because no migration file had been provided. He said I should have made it clearer. It was bold, red and […]

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The No-Blame Review

The incident review was described as a safe, no-blame discussion. The opening slide was titled: QA Failure The facilitator reminded everyone not to become defensive.

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