Testing and sprint planning challanges

An insightful article/survey by Derek Morrison:

Points to watch out for when converting from waterfall to agile testing

100% stated that:

• There was a lack of written requirements to test against, not enough detail in the requirements resulting in no real understanding on how a feature should work. Also a lack of forethought on features causes problems later on in th sprint.
• No formal tracking of defects: only the tester is using the defect log and changing the status.

The 1st one is probably in the hands of your product managers and product engineers who are supposed to have the best idea of how a customer would be using a feature but the 2nd point, I think, could be easily taken care of by a good request/bug tracking system (preferably supporting agile processes, and workflow that provisions testing/sign-off stage).

50% said there were:

• No proper test management processes.
• No re-use of test scripts across the different on-line products using the same backend systems.
• Not enough sharing of information across the different groups (group = testers, product managers and developers).

1,2: Check with the experts of Continuous Integration (http://testearly.com) regarding the best practices for test management processes.

3: I believe what is required here is a request tracking/product management system (probably more than just a Wiki, or in cobination with one) that is designed to be a convenient tool for multiple teams: developers, testers, support, and product managers.