The road to the financial ruin experienced on Wall Street during the past two years was paved with ineffective risk management strategies. While risk management theory continues to evolve, implementation of that theory often fails, especially when it comes to software. Though most executives readily acknowledge risk management is an essential practice for software projects, few can point to accomplishments and sustainability of their organization’s software risk efforts. Why is it so difficult to build and sustain effective software risk management? Do risk management’s intellectual demands exceed human capability? Are hidden forces thwarting our efforts to build and sustain good practices? Payson Hall describes the human challenges inherent in developing and sustaining an effective risk management program and why many risk management efforts become paradoxical victims of their own success.

Your company is ready to launch its new product. How will it perform under real-world conditions? Will it meet the needs and expectations of the users? Will it operate on all the platforms and configurations for which it was designed? With the future of the product, your company, and perhaps your job depending on the answers, beta testing is a great way to maximize your chances of success. Beta testing provides empirical metrics that prove or disprove that your product will meet clients’ expectations, providing you with input for necessary course corrections in the product. Rob Swoboda explains the process of beta testing as well as the key concepts needed to plan, execute, and evaluate a successful beta testing effort. Rob shares his insights into the practices he employs to design and manage high-priority beta test efforts and offers you the keys to succeed in your own beta test program.

Is your organization releasing applications that target multiple mobile devices, platforms, or browsers? If so, you have faced-or soon will face-the challenge of choosing and setting up a test environment for these devices and platforms. Nat Couture shows how to develop a cost-effective application test environment to mitigate the risks associated with deploying mobile applications. He shares his latest research on mobile devices, mobile platforms, and mobile browser usage, and explains in detail what you need to consider when choosing a test environment. Learn how to select a winning combination of device-specific simulation, platform-specific simulation, and browser-specific simulation-coupled with tests on the actual devices. Build a mobile device testing program that reduces cost, increases coverage, and helps achieve the level of confidence you need to release mobile applications into production.

Over the years, experts have defined testing as a process of checking, a process of exploring, a process of evaluating, a process of measuring, and a process of improving. For a quarter of a century, we have been focused on the internal process of testing, while generally disregarding its real purpose-creating information that others on the project can use to improve product quality. Join Lee Copeland as he discusses why quantifying the value of testing is difficult work. Perhaps that’s why we concentrate so much on test process; it is much easier to explain. Lee identifies stakeholders for the information we create and presents a three-step approach to creating the information they need to make critical decisions. He shares key attributes of this information-accuracy, timeliness, completeness, relevancy, and more.