Is it Friday yet?

We are at the beginning of a release and things are a little tense. Stupid bugs that never should have made it out to the customers are appearing much to often for anyones comfort. At least the updates are going smoothly. It's everything after that that is making everyone sooo irritable. And I don't know how to fix it. It happens every release. We try so hard (pair programming, writing tests, manual testing, etc.) to keep bugs from getting out but they always seem to and when you go to fix them it's always "Well didn't you test this?" or "Did anyone review this?" or "How could we be so silly?". And, of course, everyone is on edge already so everything sounds/feels like an attack and that just makes everything worse.

So why are we like this? There isn't really anything anyone can do about the errors that get out to the customers. Once they are out, the only thing we can do is fix them. But, it's like, everyone feels like there should have been something more someone else could have done to make sure that it did not get out in the first place, and sometimes there is. If they had only tested that one more scenario or entered the data in this certain way, they would have discovered the bug. If the process was simpler or the tests were better we would not have had the problem in the first place. Unfortunately, you can say this till you are blue in the face and those sneaky little bugs will still find a way to get through to your customers. As long as they aren't huge, database destroying, data eating bugs, then it is unfortunate, but it is not the end of the world so why treat it that way. It's no one's fault (or perhaps it is everyone's fault if we are considering ourselves a team), it's just something that happens and in this business, you had better get used to it because it will continue to happen forever no matter how many tests or how simple the process.

So how do you get around this attitude that is adopted every time release season is upon us? I don't know. Do we really want to? Maybe we just care too much about trying to make a good product for our users that we are upset when it has problems (even if they are small and only one person out of a thousand noticed). Or maybe it's just frustration from going through the same process over and over and nothing ever really getting any better (except the type/size of errors that are getting through). I guess all we can really do is suck it up and try to tolerate each other as much as possible until all the updates are done. Then we can relax again and get ready for the next round.