True Teams and Short Sprints
Q: How does an agile team work together with a separate test organization and/or demanding test process (e.g. hardware tests, longer stress tests)?
Q: Do you believe that hardware dependent products could have their requirements formulated to fit within 2/4 weeks development cycles?
Regards,
Irfan
A: Irfan, your questions are good ones! I actually wouldn't call it an agile team if the test people are not part of the team. Scrum specifically requires that the team produce "potentially shippable" software at the end of every sprint. To do this requires that testing be completed every sprint, and of course, to do this requires substantial investment in automation. This also addresses your question about development cycle… Sprints are _not_ development cycles. They are product delivery cycles. Therefore, an organization has to change how it does work in order to enable a team (or set of teams) to deliver product every Sprint. For what it's worth, I always strongly encourage teams and organizations to start with one week long sprints. Scrum doesn't tell you how to solve the problem of delivering something valuable in that short time, only that you must! Good luck 
