Phil Knight -- of Nike's oft quoted public utterance, "This is what I get for $400 million?" -- has become the poster child for highlighting the difficulty of implementing supply chain technologies.

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) has emerged as the middleware approach of choice for companies that want to create distributed applications (Web services) on the Internet. By itself, XML provides a message format. In the past year, XML has been supplemented by a variety of protocols that extend its power. XML's tag description facility has been extended with XML script to make it easier to describe complex data formats. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) has been widely adopted to provide a transport mechanism.

Making components work means making them deliver on their promises -- timeliness, flexibility, and efficiency. These are among the top challenges faced by today's IT organizations.

Making components work means making them do what has been promised over the past several years. The idea was that by reusing components, development would be much faster, and timeliness and efficiency goals would be met. These are still pressing goals for IT organizations. But components haven't worked, and reuse claims are treated with cynicism.

Agent technology is currently one of the most active and vibrant areas of IT research and development. After many years, the word agent has become fashionable because the state of the technology seems to fit several important applications, including business process management, manufacturing, information retrieval, user assistants, and even entertainment.

Cutter Consortium has been conducting a survey to determine whether companies are undertaking e-business projects and, if so, how they are architecting these projects. This is the first in a series of Executive Updates in which we will report on these findings.

As the amount of collected information from multiple sources and formats grows (witness the growth in storage requirements due to the explosion of the Internet), the ability to derive value from the mountains of data has significantly decreased.

As the amount of collected information from multiple sources and formats grows (witness the growth in storage requirements due to the explosion of the Internet), the ability to derive value from the mountains of data has significantly decreased.

Data complexity and quality, when underestimated, have derailed more than one business process reengineering (BPR), enterprise resource planning, or data warehousing project.

You've read all the articles, attended all the conferences, and now you're charged up to start your own data warehousing/business intelligence (BI) project and attain that 401% return on investment (ROI) that you've heard everyone talking about. You've gone to the chief financial officer or the vice president of marketing and gained the funding for your enterprise data warehouse. Congratulations!

After countless hours of research, reading articles, and attending conferences, you are ready to tackle a data warehousing/business intelligence (BI) project and finally see the 401% return on investment everyone else seems to be getting. You get the funding, only to realize the real work lay ahead of you -- purchasing software, hardware, and middleware.

Rework is the single most costly activity in software projects. It consists of finding and fixing defects that were introduced earlier in the project.1 Given the labor-intensive nature of software development, defects are unavoidable.

A large proportion of software project cost is spent on rework. Rework is the effort expended on finding and fixing defects that were introduced earlier. A defect is introduced because of a misunderstood customer need or a programmer who made a mistake.

In this Executive Update, we continue our look at the issues involved in the agile versus heavy methodology fray, drawing on data from Cutter Consortium's ongoing surveys.

The following article by Tom DeMarco was orginally published in Cutter Information Corp.'s American Programmer (now Cutter IT Journal) and later included in Mr. DeMarco's book, Why Does Software Cost So Much (and Other Puzzles of the Information Age) (Dorset House, 1995).

Since companies today are faced with intense global competition for price, quality, and service, CIOs and other IT managers are confronted with unprecedented pressures. IT managers are expected to deliver quality IT services and systems in an environment of rapid business and technology change, short delivery cycles, and ever-changing business requirements.

Since companies today are faced with intense global competition for price, quality, and service, CIOs and other IT managers are confronted with unprecedented pressures. IT managers are expected to deliver quality IT services and systems in an environment of rapid business and technology change, short delivery cycles, and ever-changing business requirements.

System Architecture

Within the next decade, XML will have a major impact on the way that application systems are put together (interfaced) and will revolutionize the interconnection between businesses and individuals as well.

Advances in wireless networks and positioning technology have given us the ability to determine the exact location of a mobile device. The possibilities and implications of this fact are enormous. Think about it: a person, piece of equipment, or valuable shipment can always be found and tracked. We can know where they are, how best to direct them to where they should be, and can determine when they will arrive.

Advances in wireless networks and positioning technology have given us the ability to determine the exact location of a mobile device. The possibilities and implications of this fact are enormous. Think about it: a person, piece of equipment, or valuable shipment can always be found and tracked. We can know where they are, how best to direct them to where they should be, and can determine when they will arrive.

For decades, technologists have been predicting the replacement of traditional teaching with more sophisticated, less people-intensive approaches. Starting with videotapes in the 1970s to the current interest in distance learning via the Internet, vendors and organizations have sought to find a less expensive, less time- and travel-consuming method for training people.

For decades, technologists have been predicting the replacement of traditional teaching with more sophisticated, less people-intensive approaches. Starting with videotapes in the 1970s to the current interest in distance learning via the Internet, vendors and organizations have sought to find a less expensive, less time- and travel-consuming method for training people.

"Collaboration without process is chaos, and process without automation is unrealistic," says Sky Basu, founder and CEO of speeDEV (http://www.speedev.com), a small (the company was formed in 1994, but released the first product, speeDEV, in 2000) company that has entered the collaborative software tool market.