Agile is both much loved and frowned upon. I say do whatever you like, but do it right (yes, self-referencing definitely goes!) One of the major points of critique brought forward against Agile is that in the first production cycle, code is hastily written, never corrected, later buried in new development circles, then forgotten about. Glitches galore!

So the early bird catches the bug? So it seems but testing early in the programming process is never easy, since fragmented bits of code might work well on their own, but might not willingly cooperate with other parts of the program later.

Agile is also a movement against the constraints on strict documentation requirements. While those Agile disciples (where there’s Evangelists, there’s disciples) praise the way Agile finally freed them from their documentation chains, software testers sit in the corner, blank look of alienation, humming quietly to themselves.

A lack of documentation makes every testers work incrementally harder. So coders, for the sake of your co-workers, document at least the most important parts of your project. Actually, documentation can also help you to structure ideas and make sure important ideas are not forgotten.

In Agile, software testing is no longer a separate entity from programming. Both are carried out at the same time. This definitely has the advantage of not having the testing phase and the projects deadline fall on the same day, but it also demands increased flexibility from testers.

Often testers are required to test on-the-go while coders are programming, giving them instant feedback on whether a piece of code will or will not work. This unplanned approach to testing might be as flexible as Agile requires, but thorough software testing still requires proper planning effort. What to do?

Instead of clicking around aimlessly, assuming that the site “is gonna work, pretty sure”, testers should devote at least of their time to ad-hoc planning. The time spend on making the most humble plan on what has to be tested and how to go about it will pay of double timewise.

Agile might be a least constrained approach to software testing, but basic planning and documentation are a must for any environment where people try to work together in an efficient fashion. Do don’t get carried away by all things Agile – stay realistic and do your paperwork. Your tester says thank you!