Perhaps when there was less market pressure, or fewer applications and products with far fewer computers, it was fine to focus on software design and implementation. Joe Farah writes that in those days of old, managing the new flexibility and capabilities afforded by software was the big challenge, but we've come a long way since then.

Checklists help teams make better decisions by making it easier to distribute decision making. A team of empowered cross functional people, working together to decide how to get work done sounds a lot like the model of an agile team.

Although some experts say that testers are not needed in an agile development environment, Lisa Crispin knows differently. Testers want to make sure customers get what they need; they look at the "big picture" and work to ensure the best experience for the user. Unfortunately, even in the agile development world, business needs and the users' experience often are disconnected from the delivered software. Professional testers can help agile developers deliver what stakeholders want-the first time. Lisa describes how she uses tests cases to create a common language that business customers, users, and developers all understand. She explains the techniques for eliciting examples to define features and describes how to turn examples into executable tests. These tests define the scope of a feature, making it easier for everyone to envision how the feature should look, feel, and work.

Personality accounts for a lot. You can tell a great deal about how someone is going to handle a situation by understanding their personality. In fact, if you get really good at this game you can sometimes predict what they are going to do. Some people just can’t manage to the see the big picture, and that is often evident in how they approach their work, whether tactical project or a strategic product. If you want to be able to work with different personalities then you need to understand what motivates them to act, or in some cases, fail to act.