"Back in 2010, at the launch of Core Magazine [http://www.coremag.eu/], I wrote a series of columns to welcome people to the magazine.  As a sort of Throw-Back-December, here they are, as they appeared in the original magazine issues.  I hope you enjoy them."

I want to start with Agile testing when it works. No, I'm not recanting. Yes, I've written about the testing challenges of Agile, and I stand by what I wrote. Yes, I can talk about testing worst practices in some Agile teams, and I might in some future article-but not in this column. In this column, I focus on what's right about Agile. Here are five testing best practices we've found in Agile done right:

Unit testing. Okay, it's true that most programmers, even Agile programmers, still have a lot to learn about proper test design. But if you're a professional tester like me, you love hearing programmers talk about the importance of unit testing. We all know that unit tested software is easier to system test.

Static analysis. Not only do smart Agile programmers like unit testing, they like static analysis, too. Coding standards are hip again. Cyclomatic complexity is back. Writing more testable, more maintainable code: that'll make testers' lives easier in the long run.

Component integration testing. This under-appreciated test level exists-on properly run Agile projects. You can go years on sequential-model projects without seeing component integration testing. However, on good Agile teams, people look for integration failures, and, because of continuous integration, the underlying integration bugs aren't hard to find.

Tools, tools, tools-and many free. All of this talk about unit testing, static analysis, and component integration testing would be just that-talk-without tool support. Fortunately, the Agile-err, what should we call it?-movement, revolution, fad, concept, pick your term, has brought with it a lot of tools to support these best practices, along with other best practices. For those of us without unlimited budgets-and isn't that all of us?-a lot of the best tools are free, too.

Tester and developer teamwork. At the beginning of our latest assessment, I had a great conversation with a test manager who works on Agile projects. Among areas of agreement: our shared joy at the death of a bad idea. The bad idea in question was this: the idea that the role of the test team is the quality cop, the enforcer, the Dirty Harry to the punks of the software team. "Seeing as I can refuse to approve the release, you gotta ask yourself one question: Do you feel lucky, programmer?" Instead, we see more people working together, collaborating for quality, and that's especially true on good Agile teams.