In our increasingly agile world, collaboration is the new buzzword. But collaboration is hard to do well. Testers are challenged to work directly, effectively, efficiently, and productively with customers, programmers, business analysts, writers, trainers-and pretty much everyone in the business value chain. There are many points of collaboration including grooming stories with customers, sprint planning with team members, reviewing user interaction with users, whiteboarding with peers, and buddy checking. Rob Sabourin and Dot Graham explain what collaboration is, why it is challenging, and how to make it better. Learn how forgotten but proven techniques can help you work more efficiently, improve your professional relationships, and deliver quality products. Join Dot and Rob to hear how “ancient” techniques apply in today’s world, with stories of how these techniques work now.

Increasing the amount of time someone spends on work does not directly result in better work. In fact, depending on the person, the opposite may be the case—spending less time at the office may improve the results. Johanna tackles myths of measuring work by time.

While many industries have adopted agile, the medical device industry, which develops products for life-critical applications-where quality and reliability are clearly a top-priority, remains largely stuck under the “waterfall.” Medical device firms must comply with FDA regulations that overwhelmingly suggest a controlled, phase-gated approach to software development. Unfortunately, many companies and development organizations interpret FDA regulations to require a steep waterfall. Many industry long-timers incorrectly see agile as an undisciplined style of software development. Neeraj Mainkar demonstrates how those in regulated industries can overcome these and other hurdles. At Neuronetics, he helped implement key elements of agile while fully complying with FDA regulations.

Knowing the rules of chess doesn’t equip you with strategies to win the game-much less make you a chess master. In the same way, many Scrum teams and their organizations know the rules but never consider longer-term strategies for getting the most out of Scrum. Sadly, of the thousands of organizations using Scrum, only a small fraction realizes Scrum’s true potential. To help address this epidemic and offer teams and companies ways to get more out of Scrum, the Scrum Framework has been codified in the Scrum Guide 2011. Rob Maher explains what elements of Scrum were revised and why, and offers practical guidance on avoiding common missteps that plague failing Scrum teams and organizations. Rob describes the extension model which allows the Scrum Guide to be expanded to support related strategies and practices.