How not to do agile testing

When our team adopted extreme programming and Scrum, there were a number of challenges. Integrating an agile team in a "traditional" organization created friction and conflict within the team and with management. The team consisted of volunteers new to agile practices. We had difficulties with planning, estimation, task breakdown, managing requirements and working together in a collocated space. However, the biggest challenge the team encountered was not in any of these other areas, but in one that most of the team figured was simple: testing. This paper describes how difficult it was to actually get the various testing practices in place and functioning properly. In particular, the author discusses challenges we faced in coming to a common understanding of the practices, estimating testing effort, allocating the time required to do automated tests in a feature-driven culture, and getting a team of diverse individuals to understand how to apply principles that sound great but are challenging to implement.