Location, location, location

Many companies still have discrete test and development teams. This is obviously not an ideal situation as the test team is usually not completely aware of what the development team is building. This also provides us with additional challenges if the test team is tasked with writing automated functional tests using the web frontend.

The usual problem is that the test team is behind the development team; how far behind depends upon how frequent development releases are. The thing is, it doesn't really matter how far behind the development team you are. If you are behind
them you will always be playing catch-up. When you are playing catch-up, you are constantly updating your scripts to make them work with a new software release.