There has been substantial but patchy take-up of software process improvement (SPI) throughout the last decade.

In early 1999 there was quite a bit of discussion about a new technology called the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). SOAP was developed by a group of people closely associated with Microsoft, and it quickly received Microsoft's blessing. SOAP is not an official part of Microsoft's Distributed Network Architecture (DNA 2000), COM+, or Windows 2000.

After presenting a seminar on software inspections at a client site recently, I asked the development manager about his plans for implementing these practices in his group. He confessed a reluctance to set ambitious expectations for his team.

After presenting a seminar on software inspections at a client site recently, I asked the development manager about his plans for implementing these practices in his group. He confessed a reluctance to set ambitious expectations for his team.

After presenting a seminar on software inspections at a client site recently, I asked the development manager about his plans for implementing these practices in his group.

After presenting a seminar on software inspections at a client site recently, I asked the development manager about his plans for implementing these practices in his group.

Electronic business is often innovative, involving significant change in conventional business models that have been slowly established over the last few decades. Such organizations are lean, often cutting out middlemen and selling direct to the end customer, running new paradigms, or adapting old ones to another medium.

Three weeks ago, in the Architecture/e-Business E-Mail Advisor, I considered some of the issues involved in outsourcing IT services. I suggested that a company would probably want to use packaged applications or outsource everything that wasn't strategic to the company as it shifted to e-commerce and the Internet.

Several years ago, while a software development lead, I was introduced to the concept of automated software testing. Just point, click, and record the test cases, the vendor promised. Their tool would, we were told, quickly accumulate a huge collection of automated test cases that would dutifully execute unattended.