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Abby is a tester who can't seem to make herself heard. She feels invisible in design meetings, and feels like she lacks credibility with the developers on the team. But she learns a few simple changes in her communication approach that improve her chances of being listened to. Elisabeth Hendrickson talks about how testers can learn the art of influence.

The challenge: With one week to go before release, the product still needs to be put through its paces. The test team: A few developers, a network engineer, a receptionist, an office manager, and a CTO. In this real-life story, Geordie Keitt explains how one dot-com employed some nontraditional testers to uncover the bugs in their new system.

Here is a list of sources on Web testing, with descriptions, that Hung Nguyen has collected over the years. While most of these resources are on the Internet in the form of useful links and articles, some are training courses and books that Mr. Nguyen finds helpful.

The most costly product defects are often a problem of software architecture. Testing your architecture is a crucial, but often overlooked, step in product development. Learn how to create apply a Systems Architecture Review Board for your own architectural review process.

Extreme Programming (XP) takes practices that are known to be good and combines and applies them in a revolutionary way. Before you turn your team on to XP, check out the steps to take, and pitfalls to avoid, to make your project an "Xtreme" success.

Do your homework when shopping for a CM tool. This article teaches you how to bypass the marketing hype to select the tool that will work best with your company's processes and tasks.

There's a lot more to managing software teams than understanding the technology. Do you know how to elicit requirements from users? Do you work well with management? Do you have a knack for asking the right questions at the right time? Not knowing where to put the semicolons in a line of code isn't a big deal. Knowing how to lead people–that's a big deal. Elisabeth Hendrickson explains how to bring your own unique talents and skills to the table.