At Agile 2006 I hosted a discovery session entitled “The Truth about Programmers and Testers”. The goal of the session is to help programmers and testers understand each other more, have more insight into the other group’s motivations and concerns. I thought the session was quite successful, and I remember feeling quite good about it when it ended. Today, I received feedback from the attendees, which was mixed. One comment stuck out.

I hoped for more ideas on how to get past the animosity between testers and programmers… not so much [a] gripe session.

I’m stumped by this one. I think the key way to get past the animosity between the two groups is to sit them down together and ask them to talk about the exact things we discussed in the session! The exercise itself is the killer idea on how to get past the animosity between testers and programmers!

This is a hazard of a real discovery session, I guess. Next time, if you simply want to be told what to do, please attend a tutorial.