This is one of my pet peeves, when people say "QA" and they really mean "testing". I have given up fighting it, though I personally try to always say "testing" and "tester". I'm personally proud to be a tester, but some people do seem to think that is not an important-enough title. I also hear that some programmers think that is a lowly term. They want to be called engineers (though they are not engineers) or developers (though all of us on a development team, regardless of our specialty, are developers).
-- Lisa
Lisa's thread about the value of testers on an agile team made me think about an experience I had with someone who came to us as "Quality Assurance."
Prior to this experience QA was (in my mind) the group that put thought to testing, and how to test.
What I learned over a very painful year was that this individual believed that QA was there to write documentation about something called "quality."
When we asked this person to do testing they would say (rather indignantly) "I am not a Tester, I do QA."
Clearly this person believed that being a "Tester" was a step down.
That was my first and only experience with this QA - Tester dichotomy. I have to assume that QA is a useful function in a waterfall organization.
Can anyone else shed some light on this QA - Tester split?
Thanks
--
Malcolm Anderson
Scrum Coach & Agile Engineer
http://www.PragmaticAgility.com/blog
--
Lisa Crispin
Co-author with Janet Gregory, _Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams_ (Addison-Wesley 2009)
Contributor to _Beautiful Testing_ (O'Reilly 2009)
http://lisacrispin.com
@lisacrispin on Twitter
http://entaggle.com/lisacrispin
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