In this week's column, Jeff Patton sends a reminder that software developers who neglect the practices of "iteration" and "incremental" will get caught either delivering poor quality software or delaying schedules in order to make time to iterate. We kick ourselves, or others, for not "getting [software] right up front" when we all know that the hardest part of software development is figuring out what to build. But there's hope, and it comes in the form of prototypes and frequent iterations.

Over the course of the past decade, Agile software development has progressed from a grassroots, almost underground movement, to the mainstream. Early successes have paved the way for broader acceptance of Agile principles and practices, facilitating dialogue not only in IT back offices, but corporate boardrooms as well. With an ever-increasing focus on profitability, time-to-market, and customer satisfaction, the vigorous debate over Agile adoption appears to be shifting from a question of "why?" to one of "how?"

Geographically Distributed Development (GDD) is a common strategy in the software world today. Organizations are gaining experience in developing software globally and are discovering that the competitive demand for best-in-class, high quality applications requires greater agility in quality management. Unfortunately, IT budgets are not keeping up with the staff required for quality management and the response is to accelerate quality management by leveraging global teams. This article compares and contrasts agile GDD testing strategies for affecting quality management.

Esther Derby has noticed something lately, namely that when people write about collaboration, they discuss facilitated meetings. Well-run meetings that encourage participation and building consensus are certainly valuable, but there's more to collaboration than just well-run meetings. Esther explains that true collaboration assumes shared responsibility and shared ownership and boosts creativity and learning.