agile - Scrum Process Management - Tips, Pitfalls, Ideas -

i've been doing scrum team while, things seem messy reasons. i've been thinking on how changed , have couple of questions raise here.

first, should role of testers, designers , non-developers whole in scrum process? if equal other team members couple of issues arise. designers , testers work on task after development done, cannot adequately plan sprint because of dependency.

second, have deadlines. these strict , have lot of impact on prioritization. end result backlog changes in middle of sprint because of deadline changes, or bad results in end of sprint. have lot of non-technical work customer support has done in meantime , cannot planned varies lot. i'm thinking team structure, culture , practices kind of not compatible scrum. scrum me process management tool teams working on development of single software product.

what guys think applying in more specific , complicated scenarios? have experience share?

in general testers , documenters (and other non-developes) equal members of scrum team. idea behind minimize risk.

requiring definition of done, includes potentially shipable product that's tested , documented, forces project come @ end of each sprint.

if testing not start until after dev. done, happens lot of bugs discovered after developers done task. have fix bugs, , that's slow , expensive both because bugs interact , because general rule is: "the expense of fixing bug grows exponentially time." bugs catch cheap , easy fix, late bugs nightmare.

that why want testing (and documentation) move in step development. , right should asking, how! testing slow, how heck can move in step dev?

the answer automation, scrum sits on top of xp or agile, both demand excellent unit test coverage , tdd. here's gotcha watch out for. features developers should ones writing both, unit , system test. testing automation should done feature dev. team. places split feature dev. automation dev. , that's bad.

ok, have great automated testing , run @ least once day. , practice continuous integration right? reduces work load of testers huge amount. , that's how testing can stay in step dev. 1 more thing, testers work on hard , creative stuff that's impossible or difficult automate, every time find bug way, ever took expose bug automated , becomes part of daily regression tests. phew, that's long answer!

now second part of question. scrum discipline. sprints short , backlog changes during sprint should not happen. non technical work should branched of onto customer support team , can scrum around that. you're right when sounds culture , practices incompatible scrum.

in experience transitioning scrum/agile painful, stressful process , attempts transition fail. 1 of key's success champion scrum/agile in executive team. description sounds don't have one.

there costs , benefits scrum, you're doing badly might incurring costs little or no benefit. if you're doing scrum wrong , badly, might better off not doing scrum @ all.