Beta testing is an industry standard practice to obtain user feedback prior to general availability of software. Have you ever considered that the Beta release can be used to validate the software's value to customers and application users? Extending the Beta concept will result in higher customer satisfaction (and higher revenue for commercial products). Also, you can employ Beta testing to evaluate not only the software product, but the distribution (and sales) process, training, customer support, and usage within your customers' environments. Far beyond just finding defects in the product, you can focus Beta testing on how well the software is meeting your customers' needs. What does that mean to the Development team and the organization as a whole? What are the risks and challenges that we face? What are the rewards?

eXtreme programming emphasizes test-first coding-you write the tests before writing the implementation code. You can apply the same approach in design when developing a complex system, including an architecture to support testing. To be successful, systems developed with agile methods must support a high level of testability and test automation. For large distributed systems, more sophisticated testing is needed to help determine which components may be contributing to failures. For such complex systems, you should architect the system for testing rather than add testing functionality as an afterthought. Ken Pugh presents a framework that employs polymorphic-style internal and external interface patterns to ease the work of testing and debugging. He also covers adding test-only functionality, test-only outputs, and test-only logging to interfaces.

Return on investment (ROI) is a widely used approach for measuring the value of new or improved technology and business processes. Rather than limiting the discussion on ROI calculations to cost cutting measures, the most significant opportunities often come from addressing the overall business objectives. You need to step outside the focus of the IT department and relate improvements to opportunities for increased business revenue and customer value. The resulting impact on revenues makes the ROI argument for process improvement a compelling one. Discover the myths and realties of software process improvement and how to build a business case for improvement initiatives. By aligning business goals with areas of leverage and improvement plans, you will find both business and IT management more receptive to software process improvement programs and initiatives.

• The real ROI from software process improvement

Your team is assigned to a new project, and you've had the kickoff meeting. Now, your boss' boss sends an email to you asking for a "guesstimate" of how long and how many people-days the project will take. What do you do? Even though developers and project managers can see the futility of doing premature, fixed cost estimates prior to requirements development, the industry still demands early estimates, often before a project is even named. Based on her experiences with similar projects, Carol Dekkers offers tips and tricks that she and others have used successfully to answer these difficult questions. Find out how to provide traceability when the original estimates turn out to be as inaccurate as the unknown requirements they represent.

• Early resource and time estimates without good requirements
• Organizing and documenting early requirements statements