My clients –Product Owners– have the right to determine acceptable level of risk for the application
Who else would?
How often, as testers, do we find ourselves arguing adamantly about a certain test or piece of functionality? It needs more testing. I don’t think it works. Why can’t we spend more time to get it right?
How often do we find ourselves emotionally involved in a defect?
Is it because we’re the ones responsible for the quality of the product? Are we the ones that are accountable for it too? Is responsibility and accountability something we are assigned? Or something we assume? Accountable to whom?
If you’re both responsible for quality and assume accountability to the end user, it becomes terribly easy to get wrapped up in squabbles about defects. But what if there is another way?
What if the Product Owner and Stakeholders are the ones testers are accountable too? Then our job is not to defend the user against defects, it’s to provide the these folks with accurate assessment of the state of the product.
Let them make the decision about the risk they are willing to accept.
This is an expansion of my Beliefs on Testing post. Please take a look and let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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