The inherent tradeoff between agility and quality is an intuitive concept. With everything else kept the same, increasing agility typically decreases quality and vice versa. Agile decision-making, for example, is often exercised at the expense of exhaustive and time-consuming analyses.

There are many people who believe that software "engineering" is not an engineering discipline at all but rather a set of sometimes-followed best practices that, when all is said and done, aren't really the best.

Web services technologies based on XML and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) are changing the face of distributed computing.

Web services represent a shift in computing that extends the scope of the Web from an infrastructure providing services to people to one providing services to software looking to interconnect with other software. The Web services vision is one in which software packaged as services can be discovered and connected to using established Web protocols such as HTTP, FTP, or SMTP.

This Update reports on data recently gathered by Cutter Consortium. We asked a variety of questions about recent trends and will be reporting the results over the course of the next three to four months. Overall, we had 235 responses from IT and business managers throughout the world. Of that total, 34% were companies engaged in the production and sale of software.

IT organizations continually spend vast sums to develop and maintain proprietary software, mostly for internal use. Some estimates place this figure at nearly half a trillion US dollars worldwide per year. This has created a huge and growing inventory of software assets, only a few of which provide real competitive advantage.

Companies are now applying data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) to their supply chain operations. This analytic field, called supply chain intelligence (SCI), holds great promise for optimizing supply chain operations. However, SCI involves considerably more than just performing analysis on an ad hoc basis.

Supply chain intelligence (SCI) is the practice of applying data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) to a company's supply chain operations.

The word "test" is derived from the Latin word testun, an earthen pot or vessel used for assaying metals to determine the presence or measure the weight of various elements [2]. The act of testing is the process of establishing confidence that a program or system does what it is supposed to [1].

Both the state of the art and the state of the practice of testing are flawed.

Theory (the state of the art) presents us with a rich set of approaches for removing errors from software, but very little advice on how to pick and choose from that set. In fact, theory often suggests eschewing much of testing, using such formal approaches as proof of correctness instead.

Software testing is often one of the most challenging issues IT management has to contend with. While many organizations have a quality assurance group, in practice these are usually quality control teams whose primary activity is to exercise the end product against whatever forms of product requirements are available.

The objective of testing is to satisfy people. Maybe we should use the word "satisfying" instead of testing. Well-tested software that is free of major defects is more likely to satisfy customers. But the paying customers are not the only group of people we should try to satisfy. The people on our project team deserve satisfaction, too.

The term "testing" conjures up an image of executing software in a prescribed way to see whether it functions as intended. An alternative form of testing (or, more precisely, quality control) is to invite some colleagues to examine your work products for defects and improvement opportunities: a peer review.

Today, a new debate rages: agile software development versus rigorous software development.

-- Jim Highsmith, Fellow, Cutter Business Technology Council

There is a new software methodology war currently going on between the supporters of the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and the supporters of what is being called agile development.

I was reminded of the tale of Saint George and the Dragon (see text box below) about three years ago in a conversation with the president of a Chicago-based company that seemed incapable of delivering any piece of software on time. He was looking for someone to come in and slay the dragon -- a sweep of the sword, a thrust of the spear, and the software overruns would disappear.

The subject of risk seems to come up often at Cutter Consortium, either voiced by our subscribers or discussed by our Senior Consultants. But one has the feeling that, as Mark Twain intoned about the weather, "Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it." So, risk endures as part of the messiness of life: not as part of the richness or the challenges -- just the muck.

The subject of risk seems to come up often at Cutter Consortium, either voiced by our subscribers or discussed by our Senior Consultants. But one has the feeling that, as Mark Twain intoned about the weather, "Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it." So, risk endures as part of the messiness of life: not as part of the richness or the challenges -- just the muck.

Interestingly, this question has an unsaid assumption that senior management is against risk management. In a recent Cutter survey on the state of risk management practice, 35% of senior management and policy makers see software risk management as being very useful and effective, with only 8% saying they don't think it is very useful.

Interestingly, this question has an unsaid assumption that senior management is against risk management. In a recent Cutter survey on the state of risk management practice, 35% of senior management and policy makers see software risk management as being very useful and effective, with only 8% saying they don't think it is very useful.

Successfully managing IT expenditure and ensuring successful delivery of IT projects and levels of service continue to be foremost in the minds of corporate executives, particularly in light of today's tight economy and struggles within the technology sector.

Successfully managing IT expenditure and ensuring successful delivery of IT projects and levels of service continue to be foremost in the minds of corporate executives, particularly in light of today's tight economy and struggles within the technology sector.