A Few Good (Agile) Testers

One inquiry that Forrester hears frequently is: "what is the correct ratio of testers to developers?" Quality assurance (QA) managers often want to know how many testers should cover developers, and there's no cut-and-dry answer. Understanding what's necessary to guarantee comprehensive test coverage and ensure that you have the right skills available to detect defects early and make the best use of your test cycles is the answer. Testing organizations are adopting Agile test practices, training current staff to augment their testers' existing functional business knowledge with programming and scripting skills or repurposing developers who are interested in QA as test engineers. Forrester spoke with approximately 12 QA managers to gain insight into their best practices around building a better testing organization without dramatically adding headcount.