Practices to Make Agile Test Teams Effective: Challenges and Solutions

This industrial practice paper presents the experience of a globally distributed test team of a software engineering organization spread across three countries (two in Europe and India) while moving to agile methodology. The team had to test mission-critical software that needed to conform to regulatory requirements. The paper describes the challenges faced by the team such as creating the test infrastructure in time, test automation, documentation and reporting mandated by regulatory agencies. The practices defined by the team to overcome these challenges are also described. These practices also helped to improve test effectiveness and velocity.