5 Benefits of Employing Colocated Teams for Agile Software Testing
The term “colocated team” indicates that there is a functional team working on a project sharing the same workspace. Today, many IT organizations prefer distributed teams to cut down their expenditure and efforts. However, there is a large section of industry that prefers to manage colocated teams for certain areas of their project. Agile testing is one such area where the benefits of colocated team are more visible than others.
Benefits of Colocated Teams in Agile Software Testing •
Accelerates Communication and Improves Reliability Agile testing is very significant aspect of agile software development. It demands continuous communication and collaboration between team members to succeed. When a team shares the same workspace, collaborating and sharing views among members is easy. The development and testing teams can convince and convey their opinions and suggestions among them which minimizes confusions and rework. This continuous communication help teams to arrive at better decision making and problem solving – core requirements of any agile software development.
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Promotes Trust and Mutual Respect Daniel Mezick of New Technology Solutions emphasizes that successful team performance is possible only when there is trust and mutual respect for team members. In colocated teams, people are already familiar with each other and trust factor is always there. This familiarity ensures early involvement of testers in software development project. Testers can work closely with the development team,understand their requirements and develop effective test plans.
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Streamlines Product Development Colocation help teams to discuss and iron out their differences at each stage of the project and work productively and efficiently. The delays arising due to difference in time zones or non-availability of reliable communication tools can be minimized, when teams are sitting together and discussing the problem face to face. They are able to arrive at corrections and decisions faster than communicating virtually or waiting for mails from their other team