To successfully persuade someone of something, it’s important to keep in mind how you come across to others—when you’re trying to persuade and when you’re not. It's a good idea to build up trust and credibility before you need something, listen to others when they're in need, and think about tailoring your message.

A significant part of remaining relevant in the software industry is keeping up with development and testing trends. But organizations don’t always have a big training budget, so sometimes it falls to us to manage our own continuing education. Luckily, that can be as easy as discovering fresh ideas in a new book.

With a week full of sessions, tutorials, training classes, and events, the Agile + DevOps East software conference had plenty of takeaways. Here are four highlights, including discussions about agile estimation, finding your ideal job, some challenges to advancing test automation, and leading self-organizing teams.