Programming often is considered an individual pursuit, but there are other options gaining popularity: pairing, where you work with another developer or tester, and mobbing, where the entire team works on one thing at a time. Each is effective for certain kinds of challenges. How much collaboration is right for you?

With a week full of sessions, tutorials, training classes, and events, the STARWEST software testing conference had plenty of takeaways useful for your professional and personal life. Here are four lessons distilled from the conference’s keynote presentations on testing, communication, and directing your career.

Being a mentor is a big responsibility. It becomes a greater one when the person you're mentoring is set to become a mentor to someone else. What advice would you impart to your mentee? What do you wish you'd thought of when you were starting out as a mentor? Payson Hall distilled his experience into five principles.