Consistent Performance In Agile Teams Must Include Testing

Agile disrupts everything that we know about testing, including what practices to use, what skills are needed, how to set up the testing organization, and how to leverage testing tools. Testing is a necessary evil -- even for Agile development. Organizations adopting Agile need to act now: testing leadership, skills, practices, and automation must move to the forefront of development. Big, centralized centers of excellence (COEs) are a thing of the past; testers must work with development teams on day-to-day project activities. Practices such as test-driven development (TDD), enforced alignment of business requirements, and increased use of automated testing are becoming essential to successful, high-quality Agile development. All of this represents a massive change -- not just for testing and testers, but also for development and deployment organizations. This report will discuss how testing must change and how to introduce a more adaptive testing approach to preserve quality without compromising team performance.