Reviews, walkthroughs, and inspections are good practices -- resources. We can turn them into bad practices -- roadblocks. I've lived it both ways. I hope others can use some of the lessons learned.

The purpose of a review is to improve the product. We all make mistakes and other people can see my mistakes easier than I can.

A little more than a month ago I wouldn't have given a strange letter or package a second thought before immediately ripping it open. I sometimes receive mail that has some of the US Postal Service's suspicious signs: scribbled addresses, uneven and lopsided packaging, etc.

A little more than a month ago I wouldn't have given a strange letter or package a second thought before immediately ripping it open. I sometimes receive mail that has some of the US Postal Service's suspicious signs: scribbled addresses, uneven and lopsided packaging, etc.

Naturally, the first question is whether IT is centralized or decentralized. But the answer to this question is only the starting point for judging IT's true structure.

Returns from the Cutter Outsourcing Survey mirror this trend.

Over the past 18 months, wireless technology has been the victim of its own hype. The auctioning of global spectrum to support new, high-speed, third-generation (3G) wireless networks was accompanied by promises of high-speed, multimedia Internet access to cell phones and wirelessly enabled personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Over the past 18 months, wireless technology has been the victim of its own hype. The auctioning of global spectrum to support new, high-speed, third-generation (3G) wireless networks was accompanied by promises of high-speed, multimedia Internet access to cell phones and wirelessly enabled personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Risk management is getting to be too complex to use on anything less than a major, multimillion-dollar project. The use of risk management on IT programs is overly complicated. This Executive Update shows one way of cutting through the clutter of risk management tools, status reports, and metrics by adopting a simple, stratified approach.

Risk management is getting to be too complex to use on anything less than a major, multimillion-dollar project. The use of risk management on IT programs is overly complicated. This Executive Update shows one way of cutting through the clutter of risk management tools, status reports, and metrics by adopting a simple, stratified approach.

Business-IT Strategies Executive Update Vol. 4, No. 20 was the first of a three-part series analyzing the state of e-business. That Update reviewed where e-business stands today. This Update looks at the benefits enjoyed by current e-business users and the obstacles to the continued growth of e-business. The third Update will address how to use this information in your business-IT strategy planning.

For the past 10 years, the Object Management Group (OMG) has been strongly identified with its first and best-known standard --CORBA. Other specifications, such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML), are arguably at least as important and may even be more widely used, but to date they have been kept in the background by the strength of the CORBA brand.

The Object Management Group (OMG) announced its new Model Driven Architecture (MDA) in March of this year. Recognizing that middleware standards proliferated in the 1990s, and seeking to widen its appeal to all those involved in designing robust distributed systems, the group is extending its original Object Management Architecture.

We recently spoke with Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Brad Kain, who just completed a project in which he integrated a new system with a legacy system. We discussed the challenges the client faced and the business problems it needed to solve.

Cutter Consortium (CC): Who was the client for this project, and what was the business problem it faced?

In September and October, I reported on the findings of a Cutter Consortium e-business survey. I addressed the commitment companies have to e-business (Executive Update, Vol. 4, No. 18); the types of applications being developed (Executive Update, Vol. 4, No.

As organizations are feeling pressure from the oscillating economic climate, changing government regulations, new customer demands, and high employee turnover, they are grasping at technology solutions to halt their steady loss of business knowledge -- business knowledge that was never complete or comprehensive in the first place.