Tool integrations have been going on ever since the initial days of JCL (IBM's Job Control Language). JCL actually made things a lot simpler. But as tools have become more complex and diverse, tool integration presents many challenges. How do you integrate user interface and simplify the corresponding training? What about administration? How do you deal with varying scalability capabilities, and varying server requirements? What about multiple site operation? Successful tool integrations must effectively address these issues and must do so by starting from a process-centric view of the world.

Danny Faught and Michael Bolton have observed that context-driven testers have a uniquely productive style of communication that they use amongst themselves. This context-driven culture might seem strange to outsiders or newcomers to the community. In this column, Danny and Michael highlight some of these specific traits that can help you communicate whether you consider yourself context-driven or not.

I've written in the past about the GNU Make Standard Library open source project. This article outlines the changes made between v1.0.2 and the current release (v1.0.9) and discusses some of the techniques used to implement the GMSL.

Quality requirements are an elusive goal for any complex product development effort. A strong process and good tools can help advance requirements toward higher quality over time. The product development team plays an important role in establishing quality requirements. In a well-oiled customer/ developer relationship, frequent feedback will go both ways. Unknowns will be explored and change will occur. It's important that CM/ALM tools can clearly track requirements and their changes in a way that helps to capture increasingly improved requirement baselines.