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Illusion and reality. Challenges and fear. These are just a few of the elements that go into requirements gathering and management. Being aware of what you know and what you don't know can ensure getting the right requirements. Read on as Harry Potter fan Becky Winant shares some insight and survival tips for requirements analysts.

XP teams have the right to do their best work. On the other hand, customers have the right to specify and pay for only the quality they need. How does one reconcile two potentially conflicting points of view? Is quality negotiable? If so, how do we go about negotiating it? This paper will explore the following questions: Is quality negotiable? How can we negotiate quality? What are internal and external quality, and are either or both negotiable? What's the XP tester's quality assurance role? How far should testers go in helping the customer define acceptance criteria?

Software projects are complex endeavors that rely on clear communication for success. If communication methods are mismatched or leave too many gaps, your project could suffer, and you could be highly frustrated. In this column, Karl Wiegers details potential problems to be mindful of, and strategies to use, when communicating about a project.

Softwareengineering is not an accurate way to describe what software designers anddevelopers do. We create software in an environment that is constantly changingto fulfill the expectations of businesspeople who aren't exactly sure what theywant. Does that sound like engineering? As I'll discuss in this article, physicalengineers deal with the universal laws of physics, but software designers and developersdeal with unrelenting change. By using the word engineering to describe our profession, we set ourselves up for staticprocesses and brittle team structures that tend to discourage change, ratherthan folding it into our everyday lives. Once we can shift our mindsets awayfrom engineering our software, people, and processes, we'll find that our teamsare more responsive, productive and change-readythan ever before.

There's no doubt that the current job market is tight and a little shaky for test professionals. In a climate where entire test groups are being laid off or trimmed to the bone, Johanna Rothman notices a trend in test management priorities that you might want to consider. Follow the story of how one test manager determined tester ROI and how testers might approach increasing their value.

Is your organization doing Extreme Programming or one of the other agile methods? Are they considering it? Before you jump on the latest methodology bandwagon, you should make sure you're not just giving your developers a license to hack. Karl Wiegers provides some insight into how agile development models can be misused and how you can ensure that your process improvement effort has the best chance to be effective.

StickyMinds columnist James Bach has used this space to describe and discuss Exploratory Testing, a style of testing that emphasizes product exploration and fluid test design and execution. In this week's column, test consultant Lee Copeland adds his own twist to the exploratory premise.