“Don’t give us unexpected or surprising information”
Just got a curious instruction from a product manager: “Bugs logged in sprint 3 should focus on functionality delivered in sprint 3 or previous sprints.”
I take issue with that; It’s a tester’s job to highlight holes in requirements, specifications, architectures, implementation choices, missing features — and, yes, in implemented functionality too. If we restrict ourselves to only the latter, we’re not doing our job as dispassionate investigators. A tester’s job is to highlight shortcomings and risks of any sort so that product managers and technical experts can make informed decisions.
The message I hear in that instruction is “Don’t give us unexpected or surprising information”. You may not want to hear it, but I’m going to continue to do that.