Eileen and Wayne Strider recommend some useful resources for building and managing technical teams. Technical team leaders have two different yet related responsibilities. One responsibility is to build a product such as a system, an application, a network, or a Web site. The second responsibility is to build and maintain their team's ability to work together so they can build a product. Building a product requires the right mix of technical skills and experience. Building a team's ability to work together requires a different skill set. Reading about those skills is valuable, but practice is essential.

"There's a little something in it for you if the product is ready for testing next week." To make a date, have you ever resorted to offering or accepting such a payout? You don't often encounter the technique in management books, but we all know that people can be motivated by money. In this week's column, Sheryl Smith imagines a scenario where the equipment is "bribed" to speed delivery. Read on for the point of view from inside the computer.

There are times in a test manager's career when the work situation becomes surreal. If you've been in situations where you think you must be dreaming, sometimes it helps to look at things from the other person's perspective. As we mature in our jobs, we can examine these situations and see how to better answer the questions we have about unexpected communications. In this session we'll look at some typical conversations and discuss alternative ways to help everyone find the true reality, then better deal with the situation. From her years of experience as a consultant and her personal encounters, Johanna Rothman shares her insights and gets you involved in discovering what's really being said in these strange conversations.

It may not be a silver bullet, but knowledge of the 80:20 rule, and the special variation that applies to software testing, can help you dramatically improve your testing-and your entire software development lifecycle. This session explains what the rule is using real-life examples, then shows you how to use it within your test team. Erik Petersen then investigates the different ways the rule is being used by leading testers and developers today. This talk has motivated some Australian testers to change the way they test. Will this approach from Down Under turn your testing ideas upside down?