The product development world has long been divided along ‘developer’ and ‘tester’ lines. Agile has show that the divide is not useful (in most cases), but that is secondary to the point of this post. Harry Petroski was on IT Conversations to promote his book The Essential Engineer and talked about another divide between scientists and engineers. The parallels are striking.

  • Scientists seek knowledge and/or understanding – Testers?
  • Engineers are looking to solve a problem — that is usually stated before hand – Developers?
  • Science and engineering are inexplicably linked – see Agile
  • One can drive the other – Feedback loops
  • An underlying problem is that scientists have better status than engineering – compare the salaries between developers and testers recently?
  • Engineering is more than just ‘applied science’ — things just aren’t that simple – testing is more than just ‘finding bugs’
  • Maintenance will inevitably cost more than initial development