"Slack represents operational capability sacrificed in the interests of long-term (organizational) health." So writes Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant and Cutter Business Technology Council Fellow Tom DeMarco in his most recent book, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busy Work, and the Myth of Total Efficiency (Broadway Books, 2001).

The notion of a "postmortem" is familiar to most software developers and project managers: at the end of an application development project, a report is written to document the good, the bad, and the ugly experiences, so that future projects can learn and improve. In theory, it's a useful concept; in practice, it's largely ignored.

Agile developers recognize that documentation is an intrinsic part of any system, the creation and maintenance of which is a "necessary evil" to some and an enjoyable task for others -- an aspect of software development that can be made agile when you choose to do so.

Over the past 10 years, the word "methodology" has become associated with ponderous, heavyweight, rigorous, process-, and documentation- centric processes for delivering software. While this has become the perception, a methodology can -- and should -- be much simpler.

Many experts have applauded the concept of speed to market. The fastest team wins in the competitive arena. While this may be correct in many cases, we should be careful in applying it as a hard and fast rule for new information technologies.

Many experts have applauded the concept of speed to market. The fastest team wins in the competitive arena. While this may be correct in many cases, we should be careful in applying it as a hard and fast rule for new information technologies.

Any risk analysis should be undertaken by assessing the likelihood and relevance of risks and threats, but it is difficult to know exactly the extent to which the information and technical infrastructure of any building in any country is exposed without knowing who was responsible for undertaking and funding the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC).

Any risk analysis should be undertaken by assessing the likelihood and relevance of risks and threats, but it is difficult to know exactly the extent to which the information and technical infrastructure of any building in any country is exposed without knowing who was responsible for undertaking and funding the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC).

Any risk analysis should be undertaken by assessing the likelihood and relevance of risks and threats, but it is difficult to know exactly the extent to which the information and technical infrastructure of any building in any country is exposed without knowing who was responsible for undertaking and funding the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC).

Any risk analysis should be undertaken by assessing the likelihood and relevance of risks and threats, but it is difficult to know exactly the extent to which the information and technical infrastructure of any building in any country is exposed without knowing who was responsible for undertaking and funding the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC).

Any risk analysis should be undertaken by assessing the likelihood and relevance of risks and threats, but it is difficult to know exactly the extent to which the information and technical infrastructure of any building in any country is exposed without knowing who was responsible for undertaking and funding the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC).

A reader recently asked me to comment on the application of data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. Therefore, I've decided to make this the topic of this week's Advisor.

A reader recently asked me to comment on the application of data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. Therefore, I've decided to make this the topic of this week's Advisor.