Stubborn as a tester

Today I was thinking more about the persona of the tester. Thinking about the people surrounding me, mostly developers in my project, but also my test colleagues that I hang around at lunch or in some coffee breaks.

A thing that struck me was that pretty much all testers that I meet are stubborn as nothing else. One thing that shows every time I meet my colleagues is that we never run out of discussions, we only run out of time. Mainly this is because none of us agree completely with the others, never! They are probably also the audience on this blog that can have the most different opinions on what I write. =)

So, is this a good thing, bad thing or a necessary thing for the tester? Yes

Well, if the tester would not stick to his opinion when advocating a bug, no bugs would be fixed when mr-I-never-do-mistakes-developer is on the other side. In this case the stubbornness has to be used for taking the leap towards the analyst or customer. But if its a bug that emotionally struck the tester, and he is being stubborn about it, it could damage the project just as much, if not more than the bug itself.

If the tester was not stubborn enough to continue testing the product, even if no bugs are found in a long time, the most serios and complex bug found at the end of a really long and complex test run would be still unfound. The same goes for the stubborn tester popping the why stack whenever there is anything fishy in the product. But of course, this would also become annoying for whoever has to answer these questions all the time.

I would say that all testers are, and need to be stubborn on their questioning. More stubborn than the products/people/processes around them. That excessive stubbornness and questioning makes a good tester.