Maybe you're the kind of person who attacks a problem as soon as it crops up. Many times, it's good to act fast. But for a different point of view, read this week's column by Don Gray, who advises us to "take ten" and evaluate a situation before making a response.

Pervasive testing means getting the right people working together through the right processes at the right time for high-ROI testing. Through pervasive testing, all the ideas we've explored so far come together.Web site (as of late-July 2002).

Before we can build a high-fidelity test system, we have to understand what quality means to our customers. Test professionals can avail themselves of three powerful techniques for analyzing risks to system quality. Targeting our testing investment by increasing effort for those areas most at risk results in the highest return on investment.

The software industry historically has been plagued with an inability to release products that are adequately tested. Examples of poor quality in the software consumer market abound. From applications that can only be considered fully functional after a half-dozen "upgrades," to the frequent reports of damaging software viruses that reflect poorly on software security and stability, the software industry is consistently indicted for quality lapses. Put bluntly, much of the software in the consumer market isn't worth the cost of shrink-wrapping. This article serves as a rallying cry to bridge the gap between software quality efforts and other industry quality efforts.