Just a Theory. Codermind | In a coder's mind. Programming in the 21st Century. 2012 August. I have wasted countless hours of my life arguing to fix bugs in bug triage meetings. Bug advocacy is a core skill for testers in traditional software development organizations that follow code-then-test practices.
Over time, I got reasonably good at it. I could explain to both business and technical stakeholders not only the symptoms of the bug and steps to reproduce it, but also the corresponding impact to users. I could help my internal stakeholders see the connection between the risk that the bug represented and the core value of whatever system we were working on. In short, I became adept at making a business case to fix bugs. It was awful.
Every bug triage meeting was torture. These days I choose to do hands-on-the-keyboard work only in organizations where they value clean code so highly that I don’t have to draw on those bug advocacy skills. This line of thinking is a deathtrap. It might be a slow, lingering death. One of the companies sold software directly to consumers. Coding Horror.