Kent McDonald introduces us to Arthur, a middle manager and product owner in a medium-sized insurance company who has been assigned to take on an agile project. For those unfamiliar with agile, the terminology and techniques of agile approaches can seem strange and often a little silly when not accompanied with an explanation as to why those techniques exist. Kent explains the challenges product owners like Arthur face and how to make product owners understand agile better.

To build and sustain credibility, good project managers focus on managing expectations and leave perception management to magicians. Explore the difference and find out why.

When large systems projects become troubled, lawyers often get involved. Payson is not a lawyer, but he has consulted on a number of troubled large projects. His observations may help you salvage a vendor relationship if it is salvageable and both you and the vendor are amenable to reworking the contract to continue the project.

For the customer, test automation reduces the demand for resources, compresses the implementation schedule, and increases the stability of the deployment. Linda Hayes writes that QA team members can monetize their efforts and also develop a closer relationship with their customers as they share test cases and results in a common format and platform.