Top 7 Software Developer Defect Excuses
I broke this down in the video above. Below is the written version, expanded into a fuller and slightly more useful take on the developer excuses every tester has heard.
Every tester has heard a developer explain, with a straight face, why a defect is not really a defect. If you have lived this, this one is for you. After years of working alongside development teams, I put together a top-seven list of developer defect excuses I have heard the most. They are funny because they are familiar, and they are familiar because every QA person has collected the same greatest hits. In the video I ran through the countdown, and here I want to expand on it, because under each excuse is a small truth about how developers and testers see the same bug differently. There are surely more out there, and people can get far more creative than this.
The flat denials
The most common excuses simply refuse to admit a defect exists at all.
The top of my list is pure denial. Number one is the classic, “this is not a defect.” Right behind it at number three is “I write perfect code,” which is delivered with more confidence than you would expect. And at number five, “it does not break on my machine,” the excuse that has launched a thousand debugging sessions.
I run through these in the video. What these three share is a refusal to reproduce the problem. What I learned is that “it works on my machine” is usually the most honest of them, because it points at a real gap: the developer’s environment and the test environment are not the same, and that difference is exactly the kind of thing worth chasing down.
The deflections
The next set of excuses shifts responsibility onto the tester or the requirements.
When denial fails, deflection takes over. Number seven on my list is “you must have tested it incorrectly,” which quietly moves the problem onto you. Number six is “there was no requirement for that,” which moves it onto the spec instead.
Both of these are worth taking seriously even when they sting. Sometimes the test really was set up wrong, and sometimes a requirement really was missing. I found that the professional move is to check both calmly: confirm your steps, then check whether the behavior was ever actually specified. Turning a deflection into a real question is how you win the argument without having one.
The dismissals
The last excuses admit something happened but insist it is too small to matter.
The final group does not deny the bug so much as shrink it. Number two on my list is the infamous “it is only a one-line code change,” as if the size of the change had anything to do with the size of the risk. Number four is “I forgot to check the code in,” which is at least honest about the cause.
These are the dangerous ones. A one-line change can take down production just as easily as a thousand-line one, and a forgotten check-in means you may be testing the wrong build entirely. What I learned is that the size of a change is a terrible predictor of its risk, and the “only one line” excuse is the one I have seen burn teams the most.
Why the humor matters
The excuses are a joke, but they point at a real and healthy dev-versus-QA tension.
It is worth saying why a list like this is more than a laugh. The good-natured rivalry between developers and testers is a feature, not a bug. The developer is defending their work, the tester is defending the user, and that friction is what produces quality when both sides stay respectful.
I get into this in the video. The excuses are funny precisely because everyone recognizes the dance. I found that the best teams laugh at this list together, because being able to joke about the tension is a sign the tension is healthy rather than toxic.
The takeaway
The top developer defect excuses fall into three buckets: flat denials that the bug exists, deflections onto the tester or the requirements, and dismissals that call the bug too small to matter. Each one is funny because it is familiar, and each one hides a real question worth checking. Take them in good humor, verify the ones that deserve it, and remember that the dev-versus-QA tension behind them is exactly what keeps a product honest.
If this helped, the full countdown is in my video on developer defect excuses. Here is my question for the comments: what is the best defect excuse you have ever heard? Subscribe if you want more from the QA side of the aisle.
