Testers in Agile Teams—Isolation or Collaboration?

What exactly are testers doing as organizations evolve from waterfall lifecycles to iterative, incremental agile approaches? Agile transitions, rather than fostering collaboration, often lead to isolation, role confusion, and fear. Many testers are left out in the cold. Agile testers face existential challenges: Is it enough that programmers test their own code? Must testers become programming experts? Do we still need business analysts or subject matter experts? Test evangelist Rob Sabourin explores an exciting vision for testers and demonstrates how they can take a role in acting as guiding lights to the entire team. Rob shares real-life examples of testers becoming trusted advisors and confidants to product owners, acting as customer advocates and guardians of the user experience. He explains how testers can drive critical design decisions early, using risk models to expose emergent architectures. Testing skills, knowledge, and wisdom apply in a plethora of circumstances so testers can take the driver’s seat—in every step of the agile transition.