If you have an important implementation date, early identification of the minimum viable product is a vital risk-management step that helps focus your team’s attention on what's important. Rather than apologizing for intelligent phasing of functionality to manage risk, explain it to stakeholders and take credit.

Test management tools help improve the efficiency of development and testing teams by prioritizing test cases, so it makes sense that they would appeal to companies that have adopted an agile methodology to enable quicker release cycles. Here are five ways test management tools make a difference in agile environments.

Tools are a normal part of testing jobs because they can amplify our ability to learn about product quality. It's a good idea to review new tools for automation, performance, or monitoring to see if some solution will help you test better. Before you even look at tools, though, there are two questions you should ask.