Managing Developers and Testers Relationship in Agile Team

Agile teams usually have people with different competencies. Collaboration between team members is essential for the success of such teams.

In agile teams, there is a potential conflict of interest and opinions between developers and testers. Developers can feel bitterness and frustration when facing the testers’ bug reports and the discussions whether the bugs should be fixed or not can get heated and nasty. On the other hand, testers become the focus of blame and an easy target when bugs are released into production. From the upper management perspective, this “battle” is often perceived as productive, since it makes the projects move faster, but if the conflicts become too frequent and too personal, it may affect company’s everyday work and internal relationship, which can ultimately lead to the unsuccessful projects. Therefore, company managers should ensure that the team members have mutual respect for each other and to prevent thinking that the testers are troublemakers and vice versa. Product quality is a team sport and quality mentality should be facilitated among team members. At the end of the day, the clients’ needs come first and they will certainly be happier if they get high-quality product.