If you think that test automation is mostly about executing tests, then you're missing out on a big opportunity. Or rather, you're missing a lot of small opportunities adding up to a big one. Consider this: stop thinking about test automation as merely executing automated tests, stop thinking about test automation as something you need expensive tools for, and start discovering automation you can implement in a couple of days and usually with extremely inexpensive tools or tools you already have available. In this week's column, Danny Faught and James Bach suggest taking a more Agile approach to test automation.

As software professionals we spend far too much time fixated on speed and asking questions about how long a task is likely to take. In this week's column, Mike Cohn says we need to focus more on quality than speed. When something is done well, it's only a matter of time until it is done quickly.

IT's continuing push towards cost reduction has led to the burgeoning of the outsourcing industry. Implementing an outsourcing strategy is quickly becoming the competitive advantage for companies that need to test software and related components. Outsourcing firms offer other advantages and benefits that may have been previously overlooked, including cost savings. Jose Fajardo examines these benefits and other competitive advantages associated with outsourcing testing tasks for companies interested in transitioning to an outsourced testing strategy.

Modern optimizing compilers  are becoming increasingly dependent on dynamic profile information. Because the profile information collected by these compilers also is sufficient for QA, it is likely that code-coverage analysis will become an integrated development environment option. This integration should help to simplify your code development and testing processes and should also improve the accuracy of your coverage information and the performance of your optimized code.