Comments on: Paired debugging http://htinkham.wordpress.com/2003/06/29/paired-debugging/ Just another Wordpress.com weblog Tue, 01 Mar 2005 11:43:59 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Christian Sepulveda http://htinkham.wordpress.com/2003/06/29/paired-debugging/#comment-3 Christian Sepulveda Mon, 30 Jun 2003 11:37:42 +0000 https://htinkham.wordpress.com/2003/06/29/paired-debugging/#comment-3 We do quite a bit of pair debugging. Most of our manual testing is done by a domain expert, as we don't have dedicated testers on my current project. Anyway, we frequently will pari a developer with a domain expert when: a. review the product, b. resolve bugs. In both cases, the developer will actually try to debug and resolve the reported issue. This is more effective when the developer is present during the initial review as a lot of extra effort is eliminated. The "tester" does not have to log the issue, try to reproduce it, etc. Many times the developer realizes what is going on just by seeing the problem arise. In other cases, it validates the tester isn't crazy when some things are hard to reproduce. Also, a developer tends to have better luck reproducing hard-to-reproduce bugs when they see the first cause of it, as they have some context. It is a good practice. I have never tried to formally sell it to anyone. We just did it. Once, after some bugs were reported by someone, I asked them to "sit" (I work remotely, so this is done online with Placeware(tm)) with me and take a look. We found it to be effective and the practice spread. Chris We do quite a bit of pair debugging. Most of our manual testing is done by a domain expert, as we don’t have dedicated testers on my current project.

Anyway, we frequently will pari a developer with a domain expert when: a. review the product, b. resolve bugs.

In both cases, the developer will actually try to debug and resolve the reported issue. This is more effective when the developer is present during the initial review as a lot of extra effort is eliminated. The “tester” does not have to log the issue, try to reproduce it, etc. Many times the developer realizes what is going on just by seeing the problem arise. In other cases, it validates the tester isn’t crazy when some things are hard to reproduce. Also, a developer tends to have better luck reproducing hard-to-reproduce bugs when they see the first cause of it, as they have some context.

It is a good practice. I have never tried to formally sell it to anyone. We just did it. Once, after some bugs were reported by someone, I asked them to “sit” (I work remotely, so this is done online with Placeware(tm)) with me and take a look. We found it to be effective and the practice spread.

Chris

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