When a suite of automated tests takes days to run from start to finish, there is value in adding versatility. With the right structure implemented, an automated test suite can be flexible enough to allow a user to dynamically change the tests executed every time the suite is run. Rebecca goes through the design steps of creating an interface-driven tool that gives test execution versatility.

During testing, testers mostly stress the 'Bold' part of the software and comfortably overlook the 'Beautiful' side. Beauty and functionality are treated as two extreme ends in software quality, where only one of the two can meet perfection at a given time. But the viewers of the famous soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful know very well that both are important. In this article, Yogita Sahoo explains why aesthetics are such an important contribution.

Have you ever read the latest memo from top management and wondered, "What are they thinking? This will never work!" Sometimes we have information that management doesn't have. How we put that information in front of management can determine whether they hear us or not. Esther Derby gives some advice on communicating up the chain.

In the "Venus and Mars" series of mainstream relationship books, author John Gray attests that differences in outlook and inherited traits account for relationship problems between genders. His position is that men and women come from inherently different places and therefore approach things from inherently different perspectives. In this week's column, Carol Dekkers explores how some of the issues in software development might be similarly rooted in differences between the software development and customer communities.