Succeeding with Agile

Chapter 16. Quality

Early into my career as a programmer, I left my large, stable employer for an eight-person start-up. I went from a well-funded environment where we had a separate testing and quality assurance organization to a company where I was only the second programmer; there was not a tester in sight. Sometime during my first week at my new job, it hit me: I would be responsible for my own quality. There were no testers who would check my work or who would be a safety net for my meager attempts at unit testing. And then the bigger realizations hit: Without a tester, I would look like a fool to our customers (although none would know me personally), and I would also look like a fool to my boss, which could cost me my job.

I panicked. ...