In a previous column, George Schlitz proposed that process improvements, such as agile, require organizations to change process rules. Now George continues his review of agile in regards to compliance and auditing practices. What he's found is that changes to compliance and auditing rules may appear compatible, but the implementation process usually remains unchanged and conflicts with agile practices.

Sometimes, an ineffective meeting can be more damaging than no meeting at all. But, if you're not the person in charge of facilitating the meeting, how can you help keep the group and the meeting in line? In this article, Ellen Gottesdiener offers some suggestions for both facilitators and non-facilitators that may help ease some of your meeting frustrations.

This article examines the limitations to testing efforts that testers unconsciously apply. Limitations such as premature conclusions, assumptions, biases and industry norms can all cut the thinking process short. Suggestions will be offered on how to identify when you are limiting your testing and how to challenge yourself to keep your mind actively thinking.

Reading and reflecting upon lean and agile this month I realized that technology professionals do not realize how many of these practices are actually from the quality revolution that was led by luminaries including Shewart, Juran, Crosby and Deming. The Poppendiecks have certainly done a great job not only with sharing their lean practices, but also reminding us that process improvement has been successfully implemented in many settings long before it was applied to software development. Join me as we take a quick look back at where the journey to quality began!