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You've just finished your software release. You have signed off, and it's been shipped. You're done, right? No!

Multi-tier applications are increasingly strategic for many organizations, but manually coordinating the movement of disparate components-developed and deployed on multiple platforms through the software development lifecycle-can be tedious a

Market analysts say the economy is recovering from the recession. But it seems that every day we read about another company laying off workers and the tough IT job market. All this has Eileen Strider wondering, in this week's column, how you are faring and what kind of support you are both giving and receiving during these tough times.

In order to control the costs and schedules of new eBusiness development projects, a revolution in estimation and the software lifecycle must take place.

There seemed to be a disjoint between development and test groups. There were four things that became very obvious to me, that were necessary to get better organized:

1. To have a common set of ground rules on the test progress, defect reporting, and verification.
2. Be able to convey how is testing going on a frequent basis.
3. Be able to determine what do I need to test and stand behind the reasons why.
4. Maintain good communication with the technical leaders to help move the product through the development phases by being proactive rather than reactive.

Project managers may be reluctant, even unwilling, to discuss problems that testers discover in a project. In this column, management expert Johanna Rothman gives tips on how best to tell management that "the sky is falling," and how to respond if they don't want to hear about potential problems before they occur.

Manual software testing can never catch all errors–so can automation help? David Norfolk looks at the pros and cons of automated testing and offers advice–and warnings–on its use.