Exploratory testing--questioning and learning about the product as you design and execute tests rather than slavishly following predefined scripts--makes sense for many projects. But does it make sense for agile projects? In this week's column, Johanna Rothman examines how exploratory testing might work on an agile project.

Refactoring is a well-accepted practice for improving existing code. Yet, how do you find the code that should be refactored, in a consistent and repeatable manner? This installment of Automation for the people explains how to use static analysis tools to identify code smells to refactor, with examples showing how to improve odiferous code

Hammurapi 5 is a componentry for automated code reviews. It allows you to establish code governance processes in your organization by injecting automated code review "hooks" into development and build processes. In a nutshell, you need Hammurapi 5 if you are responsible for tons of code written by somebody else.

Condenser is a tool for finding and removing duplicated Java code. Unlike tools that only locate duplicated code, the aim of Condenser is to also automatically remove duplicated code where it is safe to do so.

Robot Framework is a Python-based keyword-driven test automation framework for acceptance level testing and acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). It has an easy-to-use tabular syntax for creating test cases and its testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries implemented either with Python or Java. Users can also create new keywords from existing ones using the same simple syntax that is used for creating test cases.

Random videos inspired by experience with agile methods.

Domain Driven Design (DDD) is about mapping business domain concepts into software artifacts. Most of the writings and articles on this topic have been based on Eric Evans' book "Domain Driven Design", covering the domain modeling and design aspects mainly from a conceptual and design stand-point. These writings discuss the main elements of DDD such as Entity, Value Object, Service etc or they talk about concepts like Ubiquitous Language, Bounded Context and Anti-Corruption Layer.

Agile methodologies introduce a newer role, typically called the "Agile Coach" that traditional methodologies will not focus on, or even mention. For those who have been working in an agile way for some time, it may seem like a natural complement, yet for those newer to this way of working it raises many questions like, "What's so important about an Agile Coach: What's wrong with a Line Manager, or a Team or Technical Lead: Why does Monster.com list 54 positions with this title:" Let's take a quick tour through the alphabet to really understand what an agile coach focuses on, what they do, how they act and, more importantly, why.

Spoon is a Java program processor that fully supports Java 5 and 6. It provides a complete and fine-grained Java metamodel where any program element (classes, methods, fields, statements, expressions...) can be accessed both for reading and modification.

AssAnalyzer is a dependency management utility for .Net assemblies. It's primary purpose is to analyze the dependencies between assemblies. The output is an xml file representing the PhysicalDependencies between the assemblies, as well as a .grph file that can be used with GraphViz to generate a component diagram.