When planning your workload, it's easy to bite off more than you can chew. But as Michele Sliger explains in this tale of one overachiever's attempt to take on too much work, overcommitting yourself means overcommitting your team.

"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.

Ready to start writing your own test scripts? Not sure of what tools to use? Kalen Howell discovered Ruby, a powerful scripting language that is easy to learn. Using Ruby led Kalen to WATIR, an open source tool written in Ruby. WATIR is used to drive Web sites through Internet Explorer just as a user would. Just by following a few examples, Kalen was able to create automated test scripts in a matter of minutes. Learning more about Ruby enabled Kalen to write more robust scripts. Ruby connects to databases, writes XML, creates and reads data files, and can be used to create customized libraries. Combining the powerful features of WATIR with the robust and easy to learn language of Ruby gives the tester powerful tools for automated scripting.

Test managers are in the precarious position of being responsible to both the project and the team, but the manager and team know best whether overtime will help or hinder project progress. In this installment of "Management Chronicles," a test manager keeps the concerns of her team in mind when evaluating the need for overtime.