Turn to The Last Word, where software professionals who care about quality give you their opinions on hot topics. This month, see why it is important to keep your plans up to date.

Even the healthiest applications don't always thrive in new environments. Deployment errors can occur despite extensive testing—and can be very difficult and expensive to correct. Find out how to give your deployed application the ability to self-diagnose so you can avoid making an eleventh-hour house call.

Most incremental releases resemble grandma's fruitcake-ad hoc pieces of customer requested functionality cobbled together in no particular order. What if, instead, you took a more structured approach—dividing your product into working layers, each one functional enough to use on a daily basis? Learn this foolproof recipe for project success.

Get the software engineering slant on items from the recent news.