Those were the words from the lead developer that totally floored me for a while.
"They're just bugs" he'd said "I don't know what you're getting so worked up about them for. It was a one line fix for this one " he continued, pointing at one of the ones I was worried about " why are you getting so excited about them ? "
This was at a meeting ( Gasp #1 - we had a meeting between programmers and testers ) to discuss a number of issues, one of which was a number of points found by my exploratory testing ( Gasp #2 - exploratory testing had been done months before we actually shipped an EXE )
I was taken aback by this response so only gave a weak reply that this bug might not have been found until Sprint 6 or even until it was out at a customer.
"Well we would have fixed it then" was the response "I've already said it was a one line fix so why the big fuss ? "
It took me a while to think of a suitable response but I think I have it.
1) The developer has contradicted himself. He started off the meeting by saying how the company couldn't carry on doing what it has been doing which is shipping untested software to a customer on a Monday morning, having bugs reported Monday afternoon, shipping a fix on Tuesday and the whole sorry cycle carries on for 2 years.
So he does care about bugs and wants them found in-house rather than by a customer. He should be very happy that there's someone who does care that there are bugs in the program.
2) It was a one-line fix for the particular bug he pointed out. So they got lucky with that one and it didn't mean a major rewrite of a whole class module or function. The next bug on the list might not be such an easy fix.
3) If they're not bothered about bugs now, when will they be ? By Sprint 6 when there is a backlog of 500 ? In which case they are in the same situation that he wants to avoid getting into.
4) If they are not aware of the bugs now then they will be putting new code on the top of buggy code. Why not have a solid foundation rather than trying to build on quicksand ?
"It's Just a Bug" - well according to Micahel Braidy, one of the Hallmarks of a Great Tester is that they are
