An AGILE approach towards testing using Mercury's QTP

I have been in many different projects each following a somewhat different software development methodology. There are many core methodologies out there, common ones being Agile,Extreme Programming,Waterfall etc.. However, since i am a huge advocate of agile methodology, I recommend that quality/functionality testing should also be done in an agile manner.

Now there are unit tests which are written before each piece of code. However, once the developer is done with his/her part, it is passed on to the QA team. There are some who claim that QA can not perform testing following an agile approach. But i believe it is definately possible and proves to have a better result. Here is my take on how QA can follow an agile approach. The testing tool to be used for automation purposes is mercury's QTP.

The basic requirement is that development team delievers regular builds and there needs to be some co-ordination between the QA team and the development team.

Now automation scripts can be developed for each individual screen for a web-based application. Even if a page is not ready, one can acquire a .jsp or asp file from the developer which should contain all the required ids, elements and their names.

Once this is achieved, the tester can write scripts using VBScript and desciptrive language for that page according to required functionality.

Hence, as soon as the development of a page is done and goes into the build, it can be tested right there and then. This really saves time for testing as all the pages are tested hand and hand and then there is no requirement to have 2-3 months dedicated specifically towards testing time.