Following my thinking about the fact that functional testing was the dividing barrier between specialized developer and tester roles, I found in the book “Agile Testing” by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory an excellent list of fears that QA teams could express against agile adoption:

“Testers cling to the concept of an independent QA team for many reasons, but the main reason is fear, specifically:

* Fear that they will lose their QA identity

* Fear that if they report to a development manager, they will loose support and programmers will get priority

* Fear that they lack the skills to work in an agile team and will lose their jobs

* Fear that when they’re dispersed into development teams they won’t get the support they need

* Fear that they, and their managers, will get lost in the new organizations

We often hear of QA managers asking questions such as “My company is implementing agile development. How does my role fit in?”. This is directly related to the “loss of identity” fears.”

Source: “Agile Testing”, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory, Addison-Wesley