I've introduced Scrum 1 into a wide range of companies and development projects over the past eight years. When I was asked to write this article, I reflected on why some implementations have proven successful and others failed.

"Extreme" is a word that may naturally spring to your mind when you think of India. In this vast kaleidoscope of people and places, visitors and citizens are constantly exposed to the extremes of the human experience. Extreme is almost a way of life here. But is India's large and economically critical software industry ready to adopt the development practices of Extreme Programming (XP)?

Our team's experience with Extreme Programming (XP) began halfway through a three-year development effort. Nancy, the team's technical lead, had read about XP and met some practitioners at a conference. Ron had been admiring the team from afar and jumped at the chance to fill a spot that had been vacated by promotion.

Productivity benchmarking means comparing the productivity of your projects with the productivity of other similar projects. Productivity is an important measure of the performance of software projects in a portfolio. It is defined as the ratio of output to input. In software, this translates to the ratio of effort to develop a system over the size of the system.

Editor's note: This discussion has been adapted from Bennatan's texts Software Project Management: A Practitioner's Approach (McGraw-Hill, 1992) and On Time Within Budget: Software Project Management Practices and Techniques, now in its third edition (John Wiley & Sons, 2000).

A recent risk management conference reminded me of James Carville's admonition to the Clinton campaign in 1992 about it being the economy, stupid! The presentations focused on processes and methods as have other similar conferences and articles. This misses the point. The introduction of risk management to an organization is primarily a change in behavior.

A recent risk management conference reminded me of James Carville's admonition to the Clinton campaign in 1992 about it being the economy, stupid! The presentations focused on processes and methods as have other similar conferences and articles. This misses the point. The introduction of risk management to an organization is primarily a change in behavior.

Imagine that you were going to build an IT outsourcing process from the ground up -- that is, you didn't have to deal with existing constraints or "the way we've always done it around here." How would you do it? What capabilities would be critical to maintain a high degree of outsourcing success and ongoing business customer satisfaction?

Imagine that you were going to build an IT outsourcing process from the ground up -- that is, you didn't have to deal with existing constraints or "the way we've always done it around here." How would you do it? What capabilities would be critical to maintain a high degree of outsourcing success and ongoing business customer satisfaction?

As outsourcing has evolved over the past 10 years, many new trends have developed. Client companies have become more adept at maximizing the value received through outsourcing using a number of methods.

As outsourcing has evolved over the past 10 years, many new trends have developed. Client companies have become more adept at maximizing the value received through outsourcing using a number of methods.

Enterprise architecture means very different things to different people. Some think of it as one thing, while others view it as a set of different architectures or perspectives. In recent years, the Zachman framework has become an increasingly popular way of defining the breadth and scope of an enterprise architecture.

Enterprise architecture means very different things to different people. Some think of it as one thing, while others view it as a set of different architectures or perspectives. In recent years, the Zachman framework has become an increasingly popular way of defining the breadth and scope of an enterprise architecture.

Systems Architecture

Systems Architecture