Beware the automated unit testing

As one of the core agile practices, unit testing single-handedly can become a deal breaker, while selling Agile to the company. Test harness is a visible investment while Testing as a ubiquitous process is intangible and connection between the price and benefit is not obvious.

If you apply notions of Return on Investment and Total Cost of Ownership to the realties of the software development, the emphasis will be on maintenance, quality and other "ephemeral" concepts. Organizations often pay attention to Software Development Lifecycle, which doesn't take in account a long-term maintenance, while latest amounts to up to 90% of the total project costs. This and frequent misinterpretation of the PASS MADE principles lure dilettantes to perceive maintainability as a second-rate goal. "Saving" on testing and quality assurance in pursuit of short-term goals, organizations actually undermine quality but do not understand it or see it as a canning scheme to keep shaking customer for more money.

The unit test harness (left alone TDD) plays a crucial role in keeping application afloat during development and a long way after it done.

Said that, I still think that management should be very careful, giving a green light to TDD and unit testing. The "light weight" of Agile process does not mean "light control" but rather assumes that rigid discipline and self-control would become self-replicating daily practices. If you made a commitment to the practice you'd better stick to it. Nothing is worse, than investing the time and effort in the test coverage and abandoning it after project is done. No doubt, the tests have already helped along the way - minimizing integration and regression testing time and indirectly promoting the better design. But by letting harness rot in oblivion, the organization will deprive itself from ripping a long-lasting benefits, and also will give itself a false sense of security actually implementing some of the practices (and blame them for the failure afterwards).

So don't get into that relationship if you not sure that you will stay committed.