Virtualized software test environments deliver quantifiable benefits-lower lab costs, faster test cycles, and lower IT support overhead. New capabilities in virtualization and virtual test lab solutions are being brought to market by vendors such as VMWare, Surgient, VM Logix, and illumita. These tools promise compelling productivity improvements: richer test scope, tighter lab integration with test tools and processes, and on-demand test infrastructure. John Janakiraman describes capabilities and benefits of virtual test lab environments, offers guidance in adopting a virtual test lab, and shares lessons learned from real-world implementations. John walks you through eight important steps to adopting a virtualized environment in your test lab. As John shares the lessons he's learned implementing virtual test labs, find out if a virtualized lab environment is right for your organization.

For large software development projects, the most important decisions-and the most expensive mistakes-are made at the beginning of the project. At the same time, the initial quality assurance activity is minimal but grows as development moves forward. This results in costly rework (often hidden) in the later stages of the project. Vladimir Pavlov explains how to reduce delays between bug insertions and bug fixes by allocating quality activities over the entire project in proportion to the importance of potential errors. Vladimir describes practical techniques to discover and fix critical analysis and design mistakes almost immediately after their introduction-not in the late phases where they are the most expensive to resolve. He also explains how to integrate these techniques into software development lifecycles including, Rational Unified Process, Open Unified Process, and Microsoft Solutions Framework.

One of the seven principles of Lean Thinking is "eliminate waste." Eliminating waste means minimizing the cost of the resources we use to deliver software to our stakeholders. Jean Tabaka proposes three pivotal practices that we must embrace to aggressively attack waste in software delivery—Software as a Service (SaaS), Community, and Fast Feature Throughput. SaaS eliminates waste by deploying software-based services without the cost inherent in traditional software delivery—materials, shipping, time delay, and more. Community involves stakeholders working together to create products rather than competing among themselves for limited resources. Community eliminates waste by democratizing software development to obviate the need for multiple systems with the same functionality. Fast Feature Throughput refers to development methods that embrace change and quickly deliver value to customers.

Historically, the user acceptance test (UAT) is the last test we perform before product delivery. Because UAT traditionally demonstrates the entire product, it cannot be done until all other development and testing activities have been completed. This means we are not receiving crucial customer feedback on product acceptability until late in the project life cycle-often much too late to stay on time and within budget when critical design gaps are discovered. Donna McLeod knows it doesn't have to be this way. We can change that mind set and perform UAT on parts of the system as it is being developed. By beginning UAT earlier, we get user feedback earlier when there is still time to make changes. Learn to build confidence earlier and become champions for success by bringing customers and solutions together early and often.

• What is subject to user acceptance test