Succeeding with Agile

Testers

For years the common approach to testing has been based on Philip Crosby’s definition of quality: conformance to requirements (1979, 16). If quality is conformance to requirements, then those requirements better be written down. This has led many testers to an overzealous pursuit of a perfect requirements document against which they can confirm that the system conforms. However, as nice as conformance to requirements may be, conformance to users’ needs is even better. In using Scrum we acknowledge that it is impossible to perfectly predict all user needs.

Just as programmers can no longer say, “Hand me the perfect spec; then go away while I make the system do exactly what you requested,” testers cannot say, “Hand me the perfect requirements ...