Back in the day of cross-Atlantic boat travel, luggage that wasn't needed during the long journey was labeled "Not Wanted on the Voyage" and stowed away below decks. In this column, Fiona Charles suggests that testers can also be viewed as heavy baggage and not exactly welcome by some parties during the journey of software development. To understand why others might think this way, Fiona takes a good, hard look at what testers do that could possibly make them undesirable team mates.

When we schedule too many variables, things start to slip and soon the schedule is out the window. Paying attention to your project's constraints can help you set realistic scheduling goals that you will actually be able to stick to.

The hyper-productive teams we have observed apply high rates of practical collaboration. We believe that fostering Collaborative Interaction leads to increases in productivity, yet performance is recognized at the individual rather than team level. In environments where collaboration is required, managers should avoid assigning project work and accountability to individuals. Inappropriate rewards for individuals are additional distractions from their collaborative project duties.

The following article is an excerpt from "Agile Testing" by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory.

Part II

Organizational Challenges

When software development organizations implement agile development, the testing or QA team often takes the longest to make the transition. Independent QA teams have become entrenched in many organizations. When they start to adapt to a new agile organization, they encounter cultural differences that are difficult for them to accept. In Part II, we talk about introducing change and some of the barriers you might encounter when transitioning to agile. Training is a big part of what organizations making the transition need, and it's often forgotten. It's also hard to see how existing processes such as audits and process improvement frameworks will work in the agile environment. Going from an independent QA team to an integrated agile team is a huge change.