I work on many projects both from a development and design role, however I would consider myself more of a designer then a developer. I have noticed when working with my designer collegues it is expected that a good designer platform tests the code they output before they would call it complete. This includes multiple platforms, multiple browsers, validation checks and in some cases even mobile platform checks. Designers take personal pride in producing good code that works on multiple environments and designers that don’t take the time to test/validate are often looked down upon and incompatibility is often one of the first things pointed out when work is reviewed by peers. There is pride in their work. Designers are expected to do their own QA and their intimacy with the code shows in the quality of the output.

Working with developers is another matter all together. Now I know development is much more complex in that it isn’t as simple as passing it through a validator or pulling up a page and looking to make sure it looks right… there are infinite variables based on user input, many more environment issues and global UI operation considerations. That being said, I am shocked by the complete lack of self QA developers feel they should do before delivering code. I know there is a place for QA and I don’t expect a developer to spend hours and hours testing the intricacies of their code, but a simple things such as does the new compile run… does the page output 500 errors when I try to run it… DOES THE CODE WORK AT ALL! I would expect a developer to do some basic QA on anything they write… and I am talking SUPER basic…. does my code run at all… it the output I expected delivered … are errors handled gracefully. Thats it… I am not expecting devs to figure out if I type Japanese characters into the email address and click on the clear button on a Flash form that my code bugs out… that is what QA is for, but if you have a link to bring up a form and clicking on that doesn’t do anything and you deliver that code.. you my friend are not a good developer.

Now I know some of this is defined by the quality of the developer… a bad dev with bad habbits will always be a bad dev, but I know a lot of good devs that this seems to be happening to more and more. It seems we have an epidemic of either lazy coders or coders taking too much onto their plate and therefore the quality of their work suffering. Whatever it is, I think the development community needs to take a lesson from the web designer book and figure out whatever is wrong with their development cycle … not enough time… no testing plan at all… not having the right environments … and FIX IT. Depending soley on QA for all levels of testing extends the development cycle and utlimately reflects on you as a developer for your turn around time for projects.

When it is all said and done, you will be judged.. even if are responsive to QA requests, the fact that you have 1000 simple bugs that took time (reporting a bug, fixing, retesting) to resolve will reflect on your reputation and ultimately your pocket.