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.

Some people think of themselves as team players because they're technically savvy, hard workers, and strong contributors. But these traits alone don’t make someone a team player. Teamwork, after all, is the process of working together to achieve a shared goal. Team players collaborate to solve problems.

Gerald Weinberg's work inspired many to be better engineers and better leaders. Although he’s no longer with us, his message about the role of people in building quality software lives on in his writings and in those who have learned from him. Here, Steve Berczuk recalls some of Jerry Weinberg's most influential books.