Are you a frustrated tester or test manager? Are you questioning whether or not a career in testing is for you? Do you wonder why others in your organization seem unenthusiastic about quality? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, this session is for you. Julie Gardiner explores five directives to help testers make a positive impact within their organization and increase professionalism in testing. Remember quality-it's not just time, it's time and quality; it's date and quality; it's functionality and quality. Learn to enjoy testing and have fun-the closest job to yours is blowing up things for the movies. Relish the testing challenge-it's you against the software and sometimes, it seems, the world. Choose your battles-take a stand on issues that are vital and let the small things go. And most importantly, remember that the only real power we have springs from our integrity-don't sell that at any price.

Software development teams don't always need, want, or have time to make decisions via group consensus. And project leaders often already feel over-burdened with the multiple decisions they have to make on their own. But there is a middle path-an alternative to consensus-in which shared responsibility for decision-making provides for input from many and one voice to represent the team and make the final choice. In this decision-making process, a team member volunteers to be the decision-maker on a particular issue with only one mandatory rule-seek guidance. The greater the impact the decision will have on the organization, the wider the quest for advice must be-all the way to the board of directors, if appropriate. Join Michele Sliger to learn how this approach to decision-making might be right for your organization.

With the ever-increasing demand for software products, it is imperative for organizations to move away from trying to "test in" software quality and move toward adopting a comprehensive, total-life cycle software quality management approach. Such an approach is the basis of real software quality assurance (QA)-all the planned and systematic actions necessary to provide confidence that a system will perform satisfactorily in production. In contrast to software quality control (QC), which consists of detection activities such as testing that are product focused, software QA is process focused. Software QA includes defining, establishing, and monitoring the control practices that ensure policies, systems, and processes are effective and efficient across the entire software development life cycle. Linda Westfall focuses on defining the elements and techniques of a comprehensive software QA program.

Companies often invest a lot of time and money into defining their mission statement, expecting it to drive employee behavior toward the stated purpose. Unfortunately this is a myth. Instead it is values that drive behavior, and corporate values are often not part of the mission statement. We'll look at what other companies have posted as their mission statement and their values and how that has affected their business. We'll walk through a common example of how a mission statement without values can lead to project failures. You'll find out how to determine what your company values and how to compare that to what you value-and what to do if they are different. Most importantly, learn how to apply what you've learned in your own situation. See how to define values at the team level, a must in order to ensure effective working relationships and that the right actions are taken by everyone to achieve project goals.