Works For Me

A certain type of response by a developer to a known defect. E.g.,

: Tester: The Gantt chart doesn't resize on my machine.
: Developer: It works for me.

Also known as ItWorksOnMyMachine?. In IndustrialDesign?, this is known as EgoDesignType?.

WORKSFORME is one of the bug states allowed by BugZilla. In effect, it is similar to NEEDINFO: the assignee should do more work to characterize the defect.

Usually, Cannot duplicate is a more polite way of stating this situation.

: Tester: The Gantt chart doesn't resize on my machine.
: Developer: I've tried and don't seem able to duplicate this. Can you give me any more details?

Usually the result of a very nebulous and useless bug report. For example, X is a 17-step process, with many detailed pieces, multiple paths, and many possible error conditions. The tester will report "X didn't work", without bothering to describe what inputs they used, which path they followed, or what error messages (if any) they received, or what the behavior of the system was afterward. The developer will put in expected inputs, perhaps even going so far as to try expected error conditions and seeing that the expected error messages appear, see it work as expected, and say "It works for me.".

Despite what seems a callous response, developers don't like this. It's possible that there is a bug, and if so they'd like to fix it, but they can't track it down and fix it without any information about it. So in frustration, they return a response that is equally as useless as the bug report was.

It's also not unusual to find out, after lengthy investigation, that the tester was actually trying to do Y, and X really does work just fine. They could not define the problem because they didn't even know what they were trying to do in the first place.

: Q: How many technical support people does it take to change a lightbulb?
: A: What's the problem? I've got a lightbulb of exactly the same type and wattage, and it WorksForMe.