In today's fast-paced, fiercely competitive world of commercial new-product development, speed and flexibility are essential. Companies are increasingly realizing that the old, sequential approach to developing new products simply won't get the job done.1

A large e-business database vendor had to deliver a Java application to a key customer within 6 months and support it for at least another 18. Joe Mellow, the project manager, estimated that 145 new classes would have to be developed to deliver the functionality. He also knew that his budget was meager, and the expected revenue from this engagement was barely sufficient to cover his development and support costs.

The dreaded dragon of traditional project management is alive and well and now stalking e-projects. "Bring it in on time, on scope, and on budget" continues to be the cry of CIOs and other senior management as they seek to get projects under control and avoid unpleasant surprises.

As part of Cutter Consortium's ongoing survey of IT executives and managers on the nature of their IT outsourcing, we asked whether companies had transferred responsibility for a system from one service provider to another. A fairly large number (59%) had not, indicating that there is not a high level of experience in this area (see Figure 1).

As part of Cutter Consortium's ongoing survey of IT executives and managers on the nature of their IT outsourcing, we asked whether companies had transferred responsibility for a system from one service provider to another. A fairly large number (59%) had not, indicating that there is not a high level of experience in this area (see Figure 1).

Organizational Matters

Cutter Consortium's Business Technology Trends and Impacts Advisory Service's Assertion #47 states:

Cutter Consortium's Business Technology Trends and Impacts Advisory Service's Assertion #47 states:

Nothing in life is perfect, although software development practitioners persist in seeking the elusive (and presumably mythical) silver bullet. Experience shows that as soon as one stubborn obstacle is overcome, another generally looms into sight behind it.

Nothing in life is perfect, although software development practitioners persist in seeking the elusive (and presumably mythical) silver bullet. Experience shows that as soon as one stubborn obstacle is overcome, another generally looms into sight behind it.

I continue to see references to companies developing enterprise knowledge portals, business intelligence (BI) portals, customer relationship management portals, and even balanced scorecard portals.