Testers at the mercy of developers schedule!

Why are developers afforded control over when they start new work but testers have to be at the mercy of development’s schedule?

I don’t think it should be that way. The testing effort should be planned, estimated, and controlled exactly like the development effort. So I propose you fully stagger your iterations. Not a partial stagger, but have your testers be a full iteration behind. Testers only test what development declares “done”, just like developers only develop the requirements that are complete.

Fixed-length, short iterations A constantly re-prioritized product backlog Continuous integration with automated builds Dedicate resources to team goals Use past performance to set future expectations

If you do those five things, in my opinion, you can feel free to call yourself Agile. Like the Agile Manifesto says, “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.