Testers Responsibility

Software are developed using many development methodologies; (Waterfall Development / Spiral Model / Agile Unified Process etc… No matter what the methodology used for software development, somewhere in the middle there lies Software Testing.

As testers what we test may differ; it could be just a bug fix, modification, new module, a whole new system. Also it can be categorized as Functional or Nonfunctional. Whatever what is to be tested we should treat all with equality importance.  (Still in real world this might to change in the highly commercial software development environment with tight budgets and deadlines.) Anyway at the end of software testing we create with our Testing Notes.

A Testing Note (in general) contains which requirements are fulfilled and which are not or has defects. So technically if the software is defect free we can release it. So in most small to medium sized companies testing is considered as a one step prior for software releasing. This kind of gives the impression as its software tester’s responsibility to approve whether a system or a new version is ready for release, which is quite incorrect.  

A Software Tester is to mention several things in the test release note. For example List of things tested, whether they passed or failed the testing, and testers’ remarks, also there might be some other defects found while testing which was not expected, with a summarization of the number of requirements met and & defects found with their priority and severity. Which means it is to show the risks of implementing or releasing the system at its current states.

To whom you the software tester reporting this highly change on the company organization structure or the software development environment. If you work in a QA team it could be QA Lead, QA Manager else It could the specific Programmer, Team Lead, Project Office, Project manager. Also if you test in behalf of a Customer, your may be supposed to report it directly to the Customer. Still no matter to whom a software tester reports to it is not the testers’ responsibility to approve whether the software is ready for release or not, unless otherwise it is specifically mentioned in your job description.