Who does the unit testing: QA or the individual developer?

I'm working on an article for Software Test & Performance magazine (stpmag.com), and I'm interested in getting your input.

Some stages of quality testing definitely belong in the QA Department's hands: the professional testers know how to read (and write!) functional descriptions, they know how to use the fancy testing tools, and they know how to exercise the features of an application.

Some stages, on the other hand, aren't quite as clear. One of them is unit testing -- the step in which the developer makes sure that each "chunk" of code works as designed. (I wrote about "how big is a unit?" in the September 2005 issue; you can download the PDF -- of the entire issue, be warned! -- at http://stpmag.com/issues/stp-2005-09.pdf).

In your shop, who does the unit testing? Is that the responsibility of the individual developer? Or is QA responsible for that part of the testing cycle?

Whichever answer you choose: is that the way you prefer it to be? Why? If the answer is "It depends," what does it depend upon? Do software methodologies change the answer?

Please let me know how I can refer to you in the article. If necessary, send me a private e-mail message ([email protected]) to let me know your real name, company affiliation, and geography.

Esther Schindler
Contributing editor, Software Test & Performance magazine

Your PDF link is not working for me...

It's cuz of the lack of space after the hyperlink and the ) added on.

I always try to test as many parts of the app that I can, but the app always goes to my partner, who puts it thru real-world testing to verify that it's right. I have one app that is currently being tested, and aside for asking for an impossible change, things seem to be fine. I have to go in to add some items to the app that were hard-coded in the old version, but that's only because my partner can't be 'bothered' to learn how to use the program to do it himself.

In another app, which automated WORD, there was an issue with the template file that didn't occur on my end, and I had to create a new version with a work-around, but it was a simple thing, that I don't thing could have been avoided, unless I had another machine with WORD to test it on.

I worked on the first app for over a year, and explicitly tested each piece on the way. The only problems that I forsee would be something that got affected by an upgrade, but so far, I haven't been able to catch them.

It's a good idea to try to do illogical tests, and I don't know that programs, or testers would do that.

Easter Eggs occur after product passed QC, so apparently I'm right about that.