Agile Testers - To Be Or Not To Be Independent?
Recently I’ve been having discussions with various people on the ‘ independent software testing services ’ of a QA team/people in an organisation. Some have said there’s no way this can occur in a team using agile methodologies; others have said it’s essential to maintaining an effective and objective department devoted to improving product and process quality. My view? It depends on the definition When it comes to asking whether a tester who is involved in a fully functioning scrum team, who is working daily with developers to define acceptance criteria (yes, I believe everyone should have a say), collaborating on test environment construction, investigating broken builds and similar complex tasks, are they 100% independent and flying the flag for the QA dept? I’d have to say no. What they’re doing, and I believe it’s what they should be doing, is working with the team to build the best possible feature in that sprint. If that’s the case, when is a tester working as a...