A dedicated tester is someone who tests a project from end to end. Basically, they’re there to make sure that everything works. But, do dedicated testers really belong on Agile teams?
It’s a good question that has been debated over and over again. Most Agile development teams would say no. Most of the time the developers usually play a dual role, which involves development and testing. Having a dedicated tester can often help a team see things from a different angle.
One of the main reasons that dedicated testers are needed on Agile teams, including the Scrum methodology, is their ability to
look at things from a variety of angles and in a very in-depth manner. A dedicated tester can view things the same way a product owner does. This helps teams come up with solutions that will actually work in real world settings instead of the testing situation.
However, many teams don’t see the need for a dedicated tester, especially if they have a developer that can build code with TDD. But the opposite may actually be the case. If you have a developer that’s only familiar with TDD, this may be hurting your team in the long run. A dedicated tester has gone through years of training and certification and can come to the table with a wide variety of knowledge. They have knowledge of other tools and methods outside of just TDD.
Dedicated testers also know how to implement quality standards. Quality assurance is a big part of what a dedicated tester does. They know how to recognize and communicate what a quality standard is.
Dedicated testers are masters at testing. They've had years of training to learn this. Dedicated testers know how testing should be broken up. They’ve probably had years of experience with this and can almost intuitively know where things should be broken up.
As mentioned before, dedicated testers think like product owners and they should also be involved with the product owner and client. This way, any ambiguities can be cleared up during the backlog process and not further down the road when things are more critical. Dedicated testers can also help with the exploratory testing to make sure that everything is working properly and can even think of new ways of testing for the team.
Having an end-to-end dedicated tester can vastly improve the quality and consistency of the product being delivered to the client. Just having an Agile team tester can lead to problems when you go to deliver the product. Dedicated testers do belong on an Agile team throughout the whole process.