The system of apprenticeship was first developed in the late Middle Ages. The uneducated and inexperienced were employed by a master craftsman in exchange for formal training in a particular craft. So why does apprenticeship seldom happen within software testing? Do we subconsciously believe that just about anyone can test software? Join Lloyd Roden and discover what apprenticeship training is and-even more importantly-what it is not. Learn how this practice can be easily adapted to suit software testing. Find out about the advantages and disadvantages of several apprenticeship models: Chief Tester, Hierarchical, Buddy, and Coterie. With personal experiences to share, Lloyd shows how projects will benefit immediately with the rebirth of the apprenticeship system in your test team.

• Four apprenticeship models that can apply to software testers
• Measures of the benefits and return on investment of apprenticeships

Find out how teams transitioning to Agile practices must re-think their workflows and project metrics originally designed to handle many hundreds of defect reports that occur in typical testlast development cycles. Richard Leavitt discusses how a real-world implementation of key practices like early testing and continual integration-though not without bumps and bruises-lowered the number of open defect reports by an order of magnitude. These practices also can improve how the team communicates, reduce delays, and provide more direct measures of project status, feature progress, and release readiness.

Software engineering has come a long way, but programmers still spend a lot of time on tasks that could be automated. Fortunately, there's model driven architecture with its new generation of modeling tools that go way beyond the average UML. Learn how MDA addresses the challenges of today's highly networked, constantly changing systems environment and provides an architecture that assures portability, platform independence, productivity, and much more.

According to the Object Management Group (OMG), the benefits of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) are significant to businesses and developers alike: reduced overall product life costs, faster development, better application quality, rapid deployment of new technology, and a higher ROI on new technology. In short, the hype is that MDA enables system integration strategies that are better, faster, and cheaper. However, the MDA approach represents a fundamental change in the way software is developed, and it revolutionizes how you allocate test resources and how you create system tests. Timothy Korson outlines the MDA process and then suggests ways to change quality assurance activities to mesh with the MDA development style. Take away a realistic view of the current state of MDA practices compared to the MDA promise and vision, offered by the OMG.