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When building successful relationships with your customers, certain verbs such as "to respond," "to listen," and "to involve" are important and should be used. But this column is about another common place verb that's not at all customer focused: "to get." Naomi doesn't mean "to get a 50% raise for completing the project on time" or "to get a week off for creating a brilliant test plan." No, she means, "to get customers to do things your way." Learn how simple verb replacement therapy can help you build better relationships with the customer.

Are you attempting to start an independent test group or increase the scope and value of your present group? After building a highly effective thirty-person test group, Scott Eder reflects on the three major areas where he focused and the challenges he faced along the way. Take away sample work scope and purpose statements for your test group, and learn how to set realistic expectations at all levels within your organization. Find out the key processes that Scott implemented immediately to get his team off to a good start.

• The foundations of an independent test group that is valued by your organization
• Ways to build relationships with key stakeholders in order to foster a supportive environment for test and quality
• How to create a sense of identity around which your test team can rally

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?

From software to materials research to drugs to airplanes, companies are relentlessly driving the cost of change out of their new product development processes. Why?

A revolution in the business of software is coming . . . The boundaries between the business and IT from one enterprise to another will disappear. The space around functional system silos will dissolve.

Security is a complex and often overwhelming issue. You cannot rely solely on trying to prevent hackers from entering your systems. Instead, you must ensure that the system safeguards itself if a hacker does break in.