Why Is It Important to Hire Testers for Your Projects

When we have an ambitions idea to start a new project, the first intention that comes to our mind is – “The project must have its site!” So, you develop the concept, spend days and weeks preparing content for the site and, finally, you decide to get the project started.

Everybody is concerned about how to hire a good developer to make a site. Still, many customers forget about testers. Yes! It is absolutely important, and is the integral part of development. QA specialists are obligatory and essential part of the process.

Specialists say – “You need 1 tester for every 2 programmers. Each programmer should work closely with a single tester, throwing private builds as often as necessary. “

And this is indispensable fact! QA specialists, in fact, have veto power over releasing any software that doesn't meet muster. Just take several minutes to read why it is important to hire a tester for your project.

Here are the most common excuses I've heard for not hiring testers:

Lazy programmers introduce bugs.

I head customers say – «If we hire testers, the developers will write buggy codes.”  Nonsense! If you really think that way, either you have never written a code, or you completely unaware what writing code is. Bugs, by definition, appear because programmers did not notice the bug in their own code. Many times, it just takes a second set of eyes to see a bug. Developers are also people, you know.

My software is on the web. I can fix bugs myself immediately.

Yep, really, it is funny!  Agree, it's true, web distribution lets you distribute bug fixes faster than the old days of packaged software. Still, do not underestimate the cost of fixing a bug, even on a web site, after the project has already frozen. Moreover, remember that it is easy to implement even more bugs when you fix.

However, a worse problem is that if you look around at the process you have in place for rolling out new versions, you will realize that it may be quite an expensive proposition to roll out fixes on the web.

My customers will test the software for me.

No, No, No! If you do not believe me, try to follow the plan:

• when developers are about halfway done, release the software on the web without any testing;
• when developers assume they are done, release the software on the web without any testing;
• repeat 5 or 6 times;
• call one of those versions the "final version";
• release .01, .02, .03 versions every time an embarrassing bug is mentioned on c|net.
• see, what is going to happen. If you aim at losing your reputation – do it! The worst thing about this form of testing is the remarkably bad impression you will make of your company and your project.

Besides, the whole point of letting "your customers" do the testing is that they find the bugs, and you fix them. Unfortunately, no any company on earth, has the manpower to sift through bug reports from 1,000,000 customers and decide what's really important. Out of all those reports, I would bet that almost all of them will be about the same set of 5 or 10 really obvious bugs.

I can't afford testers!

Sorry, but this sounds hilarious! It is cheaper to hire a tester than to hire a developer to do debugging after the project is done. A lot cheaper. You lose time and money.

Cut costs in hiring testers is an outrageous false economy. Think five times before you take the decision to hire the developers for the project without QA specialists.

Good luck and no bugs!