Recent studies have confirmed the increased popularity of agile software development. For test managers accustomed to the traditional waterfall approach, this means a change in testing strategy.

Automated software testing will play an important part in the new test strategy, specifically in agile software development projects.

Adopting agile poses some challenges to testing and specifically to automation. In traditional automation, an automation specialist will automate a test as part of the regression suite, after the test has been executed manually by a test analyst. This approach still has its place in agile, but not as the only use of automation in the testing department.