What are the attributes of a good tester—of a great tester? As every test manager knows, identifying the right people for a test team can be a struggle. In this column, Fiona Charles describes the qualities of mind she looks for in testers, and the interview questions she asks candidates so that she can evaluate how they think.

When a man suffered a cardiac arrest on a ski slope, a medley of medical personnel from different countries and backgrounds mustered together to take charge of the man's health. Despite language barriers, they were successful in stabilizing the man. While this incident may seem to have little to do with software development, Clarke Ching sees that the makeshift emergency team shared specific characteristics found in all strong software development teams. In this column, he details these characteristics and how applying them can turn your team into a more successful team no matter how dissimilar individual teammates may be.

With the votes cast, the polls closed, and the candidates elected, we say farewell to another political season that captivated everyone in a way that we thought only the Super Bowl could. Of all the soap opera-esque drama that occurred during the general election, Dion Johnson found grassroots campaigns to be the most interesting because they generated the greatest level of success from the bottom up, as opposed to from the top down. He believes the world of software testing can learn a lot from this grassroots approach. In this week's column, Dion embarks on a grassroots campaign trail that he hopes will get any process improvement initiative elected.

"Part-timers just don't seem to fit in with the team," a manager complained to Esther Derby recently. "I do everything I can to impress on them the importance of teamwork and team spirit, but they just don't gel with the team. What can I do to motivate these people to fit in?" In this column, Esther Derby reveals the truth of the part-timers' mindset and what you can do to motivate this group.