As Matt Heusser sees it, the "war on work" that exchanged centuries of craftsmanship for being a small part of the big machine has itself been replaced in the past decade--at least in the software industry--with a revitalization of the craftsperson. What's more, he sees the realization of the "boutique developer" as a promising sign for the possibility of boutique testers.

Chris McMahon is a tester who likes to take a look at the code under the application's hood. Although he has heard that developers and testers alike argue that this makes for less effective testing, he is here to argue that reading and writing code is part of the testing craft and that the ability to read and write code in the service of testing is critically important for the professional tester.

In these tough economic times, many testers can't access formal training. In this column, testing consultant Fiona Charles describes the wealth of low- or no-dollar resources available for professional development and invites readers to share their ideas.

With all the hype about agile, lean, CMMI®, and every other method du jour, we sometimes forget that our real goal is high performance. High-performance software teams consistently deliver products that delight their customers, all while remaining on schedule, keeping with agreed-to functionality, and maintaining high quality. These teams are proud of what they produce and are continuously improving the way they work. Over the past decade, Noopur Davis has worked with many high-performance teams in both large and small organizations. She has discovered that high-performance teams share a number of key practices, regardless of the process they use. Noopur shares these effective practices, including self-direction, openness and transparency, simplicity of work practices, focused use of data, an uncompromising commitment to quality, and others.