A QA manager is often faced with measuring the impossible. Here is a simple, post-ship metric to help judge the test effort's effectiveness. The Quality Barometer method uses the bug counts found during testing, calculates a percentage, and then uses that percentage as the defect target number that can be tolerated after shipment.

You've just finished your software release. You have signed off, and it's been shipped. You’re done, right? No! The moment a project ends is the perfect time to reflect on the entire project to see what there is to learn—it's the unique moment when the project can be seen in its entirety. It’s also a perfect moment because the end of your project forecasts the beginning of a new project in the not-too-distant future, which you can improve by applying what you’ve learned from this project. You can look at completing the project as having “paid your tuition.” So now what are you going to learn from it?

Elfriede Dustin has worked on many projects at various companies where automated testing tools were introduced to a test program lifecycle for the first time. In reviewing these projects, she has accumulated a list of "Automated Testing Lessons Learned," taken from actual experiences and test engineer feedback. In this article, she will share examples of this feedback, hoping that this information will help you avoid some typical false starts and roadblocks.

To put it politely, software estimation has proven to be challenging. But to be frank, software estimation has proven to be a nightmare. Most organizations that develop software have lost all credibility with their clients when it comes to simple questions like "When will you be done?" and "How much is it going to cost?" In this fast-evolving industry, one thing is clear: Time hasn't given us a chance to improve our estimating skills. In this presentation, Tim Lister investigates the estimation issue, offers some suggestions, and promises to come up with some surprising answers to the question of whether anyone in our business can estimate.