This team had more going for it than many other teams. They knew how to work together as developers. They were talented people who all wanted to do a good job. And they were open to working in whatever way the project required them to work to do a good job and meet Big Cheese's commitments.

The team had a "gentlemanly" culture. They didn't swear when things went badly. They did let off steam with pranks. It was acceptable to call each other "brain-dead" when someone made a dumb mistake. But it wasn't acceptable to use profanity or be late for meetings.

Technically, they had other assets. Their automated regression test suite had worked for the most recent release. They had an automated build system. And they were familiar with code review, unit tests, and continuous integration.

Before the team started on the performance work or the new features, they decided to fix the regression test suite, so they would know that the current builds worked without having to do manual testing.

The developers and the previous testers convened a regression test meeting.

Jack, a tester, started explaining how the regression tests worked. "OK, everyone look at page 3, that's where the central loop for the tests is."

Sam interrupted, "No, that's not the central loop. Look at page 6—that's the central loop."

Jill, the other tester, piped up, "No, you just don't understand how it works. Look at the main part on page 2. See the sequencing?"

Sam glared at Jill, "Do you think I'm brain-dead? Any fool can see that the loop is on page 6."

Jill looked at page 6, and said, "Oh, now I know why you think that. Look at this call over here and look at that loop over here." She pointed to the different pages, explaining where she was each time.

"Oh, that makes a little more sense. But why didn't you write anything about that in the comments?" asked Sam.

"Because I ran out of time, and thought I would be working with you on the next project. It never occurred to me that the company wouldn't put testers on this project," replied Jill.

Everyone turned to look at me. "Hey, I'm sorry, but I can't put people on this project who don't exist. Jack and Jill, you know your project has more revenue at stake." They nodded. "Well, this team will figure out what to do to make this work, even though it's not the best situation."

The testers walked through how the regression tests worked, covering the tricky part that had stumped Sam. The team discussed how they wanted the regression tests to work, and divided them into several chunks, assigning different team members to the chunks. Sam took the tricky part "to get more experience with this test framework" and the testers agreed that he could ask them questions if any arose.

Within a few days, the developers had the full regression test working. In addition, they had chunked it into pieces so that they could use pieces of it to take performance measurements and verify that the new features wouldn't break anything else. Now it was time to start on the new work.

Everything seemed to go swimmingly until it was time for the first feature to be integrated. Every piece of the regression test suite blew up.