Determining whether legal and contractual issues apply to your development efforts isn't always simple. There may be some obvious factors: a well-regulated industry, service level agreements, and state or federal agency oversight. However, other factors may not be so obvious. The new Sarbanes-Oxley Act is largely legally untested, subjecting your company to unknown legal issues. You have an eCommerce site that stores credit card information. Your portal collects personal information. You produce proprietary software . . . and more. Covering legal, compliance, and audit throughout the QA process lifecycle, Elle Ringham discusses the right questions to ask and what to do with those answers. She provides guidelines for working with stakeholders, attorneys, and auditors. Take away audit templates, metrics to help you, and sample reports you may need to produce.

• Legal and compliance issues within QA scope

How can we reduce costs associated with FDA imposed computer systems validation (CSV) guidelines and improve test coverage at the same time? Experienced in the use of automated testing tools in FDA regulated environments, Eric Toburen shares the challenges of complying with FDA validation guidelines. For many companies, manual CSV is a like a heavy boat anchor that slows projects and increases costs while adding no value other than the perception that the practice avoids an auditor's attention. Find out how automated testing and test management practices can be used to shorten the CSV lifecycle and improve test coverage. After deployment use the automated tests for regression testing to enable the deployment of bug fixes and upgrades minimizing the need for re-evaluation.

Are you striving for more quality than you really need? How would you know? "Good enough" quality does not mean "substandard" or "mediocre" but is actually an optimal and responsible economic principle we use everyday. Managing test lead for Quardev Laboratories, Jon Bach says because quality is expensive, the "good enough" framework provides the criteria to enhance decision-making about when to ship. He discusses the perils of quality-at-all-cost techniques and shares examples of software that features sufficient quality. Find out how testers and test managers can help project stakeholders know whether they are releasing software with too little quality or are unnecessarily striving for too much quality.

We can't make software better by testing the quality into it. However, if we manage our testing processes and educate the rest of the team about what it takes to make better software, we can make a difference. First, we have to get the testing world under control and work to reasonable expectations; then, we can spread the word to the rest of the organization. Judy McKay describes how to gain control of the test process-while still getting the real work done-and shares ways to educate the rest of the team about quality awareness. Using Judy's twelve-step program, test managers and testers will regain their sanity as they take control of the testing workflow and share it with the project team. By allowing developers to become part of your world, quality assurance can become a reality in your organization.