Perils and Pitfalls of the New Agile Tester

If your background is testing on traditional projects, you are used to receiving something called "requirements" to develop test cases--and sometime later receiving an operational system to test. In an agile project, you are expected to continually test changing code based on requirements that are being uncovered in almost real time. Many perils and pitfalls await testers new to agile development. For example, as a tester new to agile, you might think, "I'll test the latest 'stories' on Tuesday when I get my next build." And you would be WRONG! Waiting for a new build will almost always put you at least one iteration behind the developers and in a schedule hole from which you cannot recover. To avoid this trap, you must start testing as soon as the developer has completed a feature story, even before coding begins. Janet Gregory discusses the new when's, how's, and what's of agile testing and helps you begin to change your mindset so you can become the new agile tester in such high demand today.

• Pitfalls of agile waiting for unsuspecting testers
• Ways to avoid traps that test teams fall into when agile practices are introduced
• Tools and techniques for testing in an agile development environment