You are only as good as...

You are only as good as your code is on production! I heard this weird sounding statement from a tech leader couple of years ago. This conversation was around how good a particular developer was and why we need to retain him. This leader made this statement out of the blue.. which set me thinking on several aspects in our work life.

I agree on importance of people focus, people oriented interactions with importance given to relationships…and all that. However, when you get down to brass tacks…it is the code which is written by an engineer which speaks…it is how it behaves on production when used by customer which matters. It is not about credentials of the engineer…his/her experience, his/her academics…their accomplishments. It is not about technology choice or architectural decisions which are top class or by the book. It is about how the code behaves when it is exercised by the customer.

Similar analogy can be given to a tester who is typically misunderstood by management as overhead. I have seen n number of cases of production issues which has caused huge embarrassment to the company which is result of disproportionate focus on automation. Automation is only as good as your test case is. And to extend the philosophy on engineer, a QA engineer is only as good as his test case here. If he/she has written bad test cases with poor coverage and lot of holes, it will result in bug leakage to production…irrespective of great automation which is in place. This is because, an engineer focused on automation cannot be focused on testing and nuances of product features.

I see a disproportionate focus of management on test automation which somehow maps to $ savings for them. I do agree, automation is an important aspect in testing and a good QA organization should have robust automation in place along with necessary infrastructure to run it continuously. However automation is not the Holy Grail for achieving great quality in software development. Holy Grail according to me is the skill of tester and empowerment given. Holy Grail is the engineering culture and the people who value it.