Foreword: Quality in agile methods

Summary form only given. The emergence of agile methodologies seems to be the answer to the drastic degree of change in the modern business and IT environments. Agile methodologies have gained popularity due to their ability to cope with unstable requirements throughout the development life cycle, improving communication between developers and customers, and delivering products in shorter time frames, when compared to traditional development methods. These adaptive and flexible methods, relying on a set of best practices that are considered to increase quality, completely redefine quality assurance work, from formal roles to day-to-day activities. The developers, following a set of best practices, such as planning game or sprint planning, test driven development (TDD), refactoring, pair programming, continuous integrations, customer collaboration, etc., create value and assure quality through all the development phases, from requirements to the final release. Many empirical studies support and evangelize the advantages of agile methods and their practices with respect to quality and some of them will be presented in this thematic track.