Agile methods (was: Another Midrange Forum Falls Over and Can't Get Up)

Terry wrote:

Interesting link on Agile Testing - thanks! Sounds like a great idea
but, like many other companies, we could not support this method:

"Since working increments of the software is released very often in agile software development there is also a need to test often."

Many people misunderstand what this means. In effect, it means that you can have the confidence to make daily releases to production because your test suite makes it very easy to prove you haven't broken anything by making the change. There's much more to it, but the general principle is that you write a test that handles your business problem, then you work on the code until the test is satisfied. The test suite that emerges from this effort is run after every change, verifying all the business rules still work after the latest change.
--buck