Agile agents of change, listen up. Do you remember the Agile Manifesto? How about the part about valuing people over process? J.B. Rainsberger fears that as Extreme Programming becomes more widespread, teachers, consultants, and mentors are losing sight of one of agile’s most important components—teamwork.

Activity theory explores what is happening inside a person while he is acting. Find out how you can use it to make better decisions about what to build, create a motivation map, and ask what your stakeholders are thinking about besides using your system.

For large-scale Java applications, understanding memory-related options might mean the difference between a wonderful user experience and recurring system slow downs. This article offers insight into the workings of Java memory management and shows how it cleans up after programmers, recovering memory associated with objects that are no longer being used.

Simplicity in testing is a worthy goal, but in reality it's a messy, complex world. Find out how to defocus your test strategy and use flow testing to follow a specific path through a system's functions, investigating circumstances in which it might fail.