The best way that I currently know to convey why I think that Agile produces higher quality is via a 1 hour PowerPoint presentation. I thought it would be worthwhile to attempt to put it into a blog post. But, I couldn’t figure out how to condense it down to a reasonable length. There’s lots of diagrams and animation, etc. But while I was working on it I created a list of points to make. Looking at the list I thought “Hey! Here’s yet another top ten list!”

Please note that in this list I am referring to truly Agile projects. See “No Really, What is Agile?” for details.

10. More appropriate distribution of test coverage. Typically, QA gets a big dump of functionality near the end of a release and has to figure out how to best use the time available. That often means that the “most important” new features get very thorough testing and the rest get a “spot check.” In an Agile project, test plans and automated tests are created throughout the project and each work item is given the amount of QA resources that is appropriate for it.

9. Because testing is done in the same timeframe as the coding, problems are found earlier.

8. Writing tests early catches requirement and design problems earlier.

7. Because problems are found and fixed faster, there is less chance of the quality of a project being poor for long stretches of time. When there are lots of tests that don’t pass, it is difficult to get accurate feedback on new code. In contrast, code written on a stable base is more likely to be stable itself because there will be accurate and timely feedback on the results of the changes.

6. It is hard to succeed in an Agile environment without automated testing. Automated testing helps to increase the consistency of testing.

5. One effect of short iterations is the evening out of resource demands. That means that testing is done consistently and on a regular basis and there is no need to take shortcuts in contrast to typical development which compresses most of the testing to the end of the process which then requires taking shortcuts due to schedule pressure.

4. More frequent customer input on direction. Part of quality is usability and match of features to needs.

3. More frequent customer input on results. Customers are the ultimate arbiter of quality and their level of expectation is often different than you expect.

2. The Development and QA organizations must be integrated for Agile success. Integrated development and QA is far better than the typical “separation of church and state”.

1. Especially when doing one piece flow, there is significantly more opportunity to detect process problems, diagnose them, try corrective action, and gauge the results of the corrective action.

Many of the above deserve further elaboration, but I wanted to get this out there for discussion.