Trust must be earned in any relationship; it is not automatic nor can it be assumed. You only learn how much you can trust someone over a period of time. The same principle rings true in project management. In this week's column, Peter Clark shares a valuable lesson for project managers and other management professionals, demonstrating that a healthy level of paranoia must precede openness. If openness is premature, one's trust could prove to be unfounded in the end.

As a decision-making framework, a test strategy outlines the vision and values that drive the project and keeps you on a clear path in times of change or uncertainty. A good test strategy makes you more resilient to inevitable changes as the project progresses. However, each test
project needs its own strategy depending on the business and risk profiles of the applications, technology in use, development methods, and even the experience and culture of the test group. In this interactive session with James Lyndsay, you will learn about a wide range of test strategy

These days, we hear a lot about unit testing, testing for programmers, test-first programming, and the like. Design techniques for such tests and for improving system testing are often called white box test designs. Join Rex Black as he explains the basics of white box testing and compares
white box with other types of testing. Find out how the metaphor of "boxes" can inform-and confuse-us. Rex discusses the basis path tests, including cyclomatic number as a measure of complexity and a way to determine the number of tests necessary to cover all paths. He walks

Use Cases provide a user-focused sequence of events that also can serve as a template for functional testing activity. In an agile environment, use case-based testing brings testing earlier into the process and helps teams more quickly deliver higher levels of functionality to their customers. Testing with use cases also provides early peer review for the logic of intended functions. Involving testers in use case development and harvesting use case scenarios for test case development has shown great practical benefit in numerous application development projects. Dean Leffingwell describes the use case-based testing method and highlights practical tips for applying the technique. Learn to employ use cases to express functional requirements and how use case scenarios can serve as templates for testing activities.

• An overview of use case development practices
• Accelerating test development with use cases