Can I get my software developers to test their own code?
Diagnostic people are the true genius team members on a software development team. The Product knowledge, technical understanding, insight and observation skills are critical to be able to spot and explain why software is not working as it should.
In my experience, developers do not test their code. Let me be a bit more harsh, in my experience, most developers do not even run the code before checking it in. It seems that they are in the BEST position to make sure the code is working as intended, but getting them to test - even a little bit - seems impossible.
Much of my hair loss can be attributed to the stress of having to worry that defects that so obvious make it into customers hands.
I recently was having a problem with a developer on the team and I asked him to make me a 3 minute video of testing the feature he has been working on for the last month. 5 seconds into this test, the first show stopper issue showed up ... with many of its friends following close behind. This made it clear to me that he was not testing at all.
All developers who work for us produce a daily status report. This report includes
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The reason for this it make them consider how they are progressing and give us the ability to spot people who are working on stuff that we don't want or doing it in the wrong way.
I am adding a requirement to this list. I am adding a 3 min test video to it. 3 mins is a reasonably long time to work over a feature or a set of the product. Along with this video a list of issues or undone features need to be submitted. It should take the developers about 15 mins of their day to do this. I get to watch how they test, what they test, what things they miss, etc.
I think this is going to work. We already have discipline or reporting every day, so its just another piece of that. Maybe will post a follow up in a few months to tell you all if experiment worked or not.
