Can software testing expert help Extreme Programming team to excel?

Extreme programming is an Agile development methodologies based on iterative lifecycle, team collaboration and customer involvement. Usually XP team members carry out lot of framework driven automated testing. It is generally believed that there is no need of conventional software tester on XP team as developers and customer representative carry out the testing.

But its not the case. Testing and development are driven by entirely different thought processes. So even if any project has adopted XP approach for executing it, a specialist in conventional software testing is very much required. Because developers general tendency is they just think testing from automated testing point of view. Another important aspect of XP approach is involvement of customer representative. This is the guy who provides input on the basis of actual business requirements and carries out mainly the User Acceptance Testing (UAT).But generally customer representative can not differentiate between their own mistakes and the bugs in the application. In this case a testing specialist comes into picture. He is the one who can guide the customer representative in identifying the bugs.

What do you think software testing expert can be supportive to an Extreme Programming team?

Reference:
>> Conventional Software Testing on an Extreme Programming Team