Automated Testing Lifecycle Methodology (ATLM) is a structured approach that is geared toward ensuring successful implementation of automated testing. The ATLM approach mirrors the benefits of modern rapid application development efforts, where such efforts engage the user early in the development cycle. The end-user of the software product is actively involved throughout analysis, design, development and test of each software build, which is augmented in an incremental fashion.

At the 2000 Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference I attended a class called "Being a Change Leader." One of the instructors, Sheila Smith, selected five volunteers from the audience. She told these volunteers that for this role-playing demonstration they were now her employees and she was their manager. Their company had studied and researched ways to improve productivity, and had determined that they could obtain a 50 percent increase in productivity by learning to juggle. The company was now making it mandatory for all employees to learn how to juggle.

This paper details some of the lessons I learned in my first assignment managing outsourced testing. It explains how we can find equilibrium between managers and testers and between internal and external people, what we can do to ensure that the product maintains our high standard of quality, and how we can prepare for and respond when things go wrong.

This paper presents a technique to test APIs that combines aspects of two published software testing methods, namely Markov modeling and category partitioning. Markov modeling provides a basis for model based testing and establishes the context for generating API calls and call sequences within a single test case.