During the flurry of emails that happened while being convinced to demo at last month’s DemoCamp, the topic of Code Ownership, or more correctly, the Feeling of Code Ownership came up since most people who demo appear to either be employed full-time somewhere are work on something in their off hours or start-ups who are intimately involved in the product. What somewhat surprised me was that I have very little feelings of Ownership, or Attachment to the product I work on. And I think that is a Good Thing.

Often you hear of dysfunctional development groups where a certain developer claims a particular chunk of the codebase as theirs and makes life miserable for anyone else who dares enter their domain. Usually this is a result of them having been involved in that area of code for so long that they are the acknowledged expert or were one of the originators of it. I’ve been involved in testing a product for the last 6 years since it was pre-1.0, so have both of those traits with it (more or less). I however do not feel any great ownership or attachment to the product. It is just another chunk of code to have it’s legs kicked out from underneath itself.

The potentially controversial part of that statement is that from a Tester’s perspective, this is not only a Good Thing, but a Desirable Thing. Let’s call it professional detachment. Just as Doctors are not allowed to diagnose and prescribe medication to family members as their judgment is compromised by their relationship (or at least that is the case on the West Wing when President Bartlett’s wife prescribed him medication for Multiple Sclerosis 🙂 ), someone who is emotionally tied to a product is not going to be able to spend all day pointing out it’s deficiencies without either getting depressed or lowering their standards. Or both.

This is not to say I am not guilty of this sin. During my tenure at HP, I got to write an entire test framework (engine and scripts) from scratch. I am quite attached to that code base and am quite proud of what it can do.

I suspect that Pride is one of the emotions that eventually morphs into Ownership and Attachment. It is not the only cause though as I also feel Pride around our product as well — sorta. What I am proud of is that Quality of it is pretty darn good and that issues that come in are usually not too serious and are of the variety that only can be discovered during Real World Trials. I’m sure there is a difference there somewhere, but it’s subtle.

When I start my new job on Monday, I’m not going to miss testing the app(s) I work on, but will certainly miss hacking onto the script framework. I’m sure there is a metaphor along the lines of “Eventually all kids must move out of the house” that is appropriate-ish, but since I left voluntarily the comparison could be made that I’m walking out of my kid; so let’s not use that one…

Am I completely out there on this one, or do the other Testers who read this feel similar? I know there is at least one dissenting reader; but he’s a developer. 😉