The corollary to the axiom "all software has bugs" is "you will never find them all." Even if you could, hardware and environmental failures always are lurking about, waiting to crash the software. If you accept the premise that failures are inevitable, then part of your testing should confirm that the software gracefully recovers from failures, protecting customer data and minimizing downtime. In this presentation Scott Loveland helps you face the issue head-on by explaining novel ways to force failures and then test the software's ability to recover. Having spent his career with IBM in test for z/OS and its predecessors, MVS and OS/390, and most recently Linux, Scott reveals the tools and techniques proven for testing recoverability of industrial-strength software in the trenches of the IBM mainframe development lab.

• Methods for injecting errors and monitoring recovery of large, complex systems

Outsourcing testing software projects to countries in Asia is a trend that is here to stay. You have a growing number of choices for an outsourcing country in Asia-India, China, Taipei, Korea, and others. Although India currently dominates the scene and both Taipei and Korea have historically provided excellent quality, though at a higher cost, China is quickly moving to become the leader with even lower billing rates and a large number of experienced and educated engineers. In this session, Jacob Hsu offers an overview of the Asian outsource scene including the latest trends and data. Take away a checklist of best practices for successfully outsourcing product testing to Asia, including how to manage distributed testing teams, how to overcome language/cultural issues by country, and what types of testing should (and should not) be outsourced offshore.

Many of us have worked on projects where some or all of the development is done by third parties, sometimes in a different country. While cost savings may make such arrangements attractive, projects face significant new challenges in an outsourced world. Rex Black offers a testing perspective and lessons learned from his involvement in successful-and not-so-successful-- outsourcing projects. In this revealing session, Rex addresses the following questions: What are the critical logistical issues when we manage testing or work as testers on outsourced projects? What good advice can we offer executives who are considering outsourcing testing or development? How does ISO or CMM® certification of the outsource firm change the testing picture? How should we approach integration testing when some components are developed by an outsourced company? How will outsourcing affect the way we build and test systems?

Many QA and test professionals are working more closely than ever with their development counterparts, especially those using agile approaches. In doing so, we are learning that some of the attitudes and habits we developed as independent QA groups are no longer effective, especially those that perpetuate an "us vs. them" mentality. Whatever approach your developers are using, it is worth asking, "How should we behave differently if we know our developers really want the same things we want: on time delivery of a software product that everyone loves?" After crossing over into development and back into testing, Elisabeth Hendrickson explores how testing and QA professionals can work more effectively with developers.