Tools can be a powerful productivity enhancer in any software development organization, but they can also be a swirling vortex of wasted time and money. Choosing the right tool can seem like a daunting task, but careful planning creates a win-win for you and the entire organization.

In this article, Lisa Crispin recalls a time when testers alone were solely responsible for software quality, and compares that to more modern thinking where collaboration between developers and testers is king. Software quality is everyone's job, sometimes it takes independence to get there.

This short book, written by Clarke Ching, is a "biztech" parable for software developers who want to survive—and then thrive—through the credit crunch. We have republished the book in a four-part series. In part one, we meet the main characters who have just found out that their jobs are on the line after discovering their major client's business is failing. Follow the story as our characters fight to keep their jobs by implementing creative business ideas and management skills taken from agile development.

Conceptually, requirements management is about bringing products to market faster, improving team efficiency, and catching requirements defects earlier in the development process. It's these potential benefits that explain why 67 percent of teams said they will use or plan to use a collaborative requirements management solution in the next year, based on a recent "State of Requirements Management" survey.