Organizational Patterns between Developers and Testers - Investigating Testers’ Autonomy and Role Identity

Michal Doležel, Michael Felderer

2018

Abstract

This paper deals with organizational patterns (configurations, set-ups) between developers/programmers and testers. We firstly discuss the key differences between these two Information Systems Development (ISD) occupations. Highlighting the origin of inevitable disagreements between them, we reflect on the nature of the software testing field that currently undergoes an essential change under the increasing influence of agile ISD approaches and methods. We also deal with the ongoing professionalization of software testing. More specifically, we propose that the concept of role identity anchored in (social) identity theory can be applied to the profession of software testers, and their activities studied accordingly. Furthermore, we conceptualize three organizational patterns (i.e. isolated testers, embedded testers, and eradicated testers) based on our selective literature review of research and practice sources in Information Systems (IS) and Software Engineering (SE) disciplines. After summarizing the key industrial challenges of these patterns, we conclude the paper by calling for more research evidence that would demonstrate the viability of the recently introduced novel organizational models. We also argue that especially the organizational model of “combined software engineering”, where the roles of programmers and testers are reunited into a single role of “software engineer”, deserves a closer attention of IS and SE researchers in the future.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Doležel M. and Felderer M. (2018). Organizational Patterns between Developers and Testers - Investigating Testers’ Autonomy and Role Identity.In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS, ISBN 978-989-758-298-1, pages 336-344. DOI: 10.5220/0006783703360344

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis18,
author={Michal Doležel and Michael Felderer},
title={Organizational Patterns between Developers and Testers - Investigating Testers’ Autonomy and Role Identity},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS,},
year={2018},
pages={336-344},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006783703360344},
isbn={978-989-758-298-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS,
TI - Organizational Patterns between Developers and Testers - Investigating Testers’ Autonomy and Role Identity
SN - 978-989-758-298-1
AU - Doležel M.
AU - Felderer M.
PY - 2018
SP - 336
EP - 344
DO - 10.5220/0006783703360344