More and more organizations are recognizing that their most important asset is intellectual capital. Organizations must find ways to make it easier for people to achieve their maximum potential for performance. Productivity and competitive advantage rely upon people's knowledge and skills.

"So here's the question for you: if you and your colleagues are about to have massive licensing and certification restrictions imposed upon your ability to call yourself a programmer, and upon the way you carry out your trade, what things would be most important to include or exclude for such certification regulations?

The notion of licensing and certifying software professionals has been hotly debated for years, if not decades. If you're in favor of the concept, then the good news is that it's actually beginning to happen, and it's being taken seriously by at least a segment of the industry.

"The only way for knowledge workers to maintain their skills and knowledge and be effective human capital is to engage in lifelong learning." -- Richard Crawford, In the Era of Human Capital

"The only way for knowledge workers to maintain their skills and knowledge and be effective human capital is to engage in lifelong learning." -- Richard Crawford, In the Era of Human Capital

More and more organizations are recognizing that their most important asset is intellectual capital.

More and more organizations are recognizing that their most important asset is intellectual capital.

"So here's the question for you: if you and your colleagues are about to have massive licensing and certification restrictions imposed upon your ability to call yourself a programmer, and upon the way you

"So here's the question for you: if you and your colleagues are about to have massive licensing and certification restrictions imposed upon your ability to call yourself a programmer, and upon the way you

The notion of licensing and certifying software professionals has been hotly debated for years, if not decades.

The notion of licensing and certifying software professionals has been hotly debated for years, if not decades.

From time to time, it's useful to step back and ponder the imponderable, what the macro trends in the IT products and services marketplace look like. Our travels permit some insights:

We think the use of software to solve problems has been evolutionary, that initially it was nearly completely technology-driven: we were limited to what could be done with the early architectures so we defined (and redefined) problems around those constraints. As the technology matured, the range of problems to which it could be applied grew.

During a project management seminar in Toronto last week, I had a very interesting discussion with the other participants on the subject of overtime. I have the strong opinion that many of today's so-called RAD projects succeed because (a) they're relatively short, usually lasting no more than 3-6 months, and (b) they often involve interesting technology, such as client-server or Internet/Web.

During a project management seminar in Toronto last week, I had a very interesting discussion with the other participants on the subject of overtime.

During a project management seminar in Toronto last week, I had a very interesting discussion with the other participants on the subject of overtime.

What about all this virtual stuff? To a significant extent it is -- of course -- overblown, but there are some trends that will impact how you align technology to virtual business processes. Here are a few worth noting:

The structured analysis/design methodologies that my colleagues and I developed in the 1970s and 1980s are often described as "obsolete" by those who advocate object-oriented methods such as UML. But in survey after survey that I conduct in software engineering seminars, I continue to find that only 20%-30% of the project teams claim to be using OO methods. So, what are all the other project teams doing?

The structured analysis/design methodologies that my colleagues and I developed in the 1970s and 1980s are often described as "obsolete" by those who advocate

The structured analysis/design methodologies that my colleagues and I developed in the 1970s and 1980s are often described as "obsolete" by those who advocate

As a Mac user, I'm part of that stubborn 3% of the marketplace that doesn't really care which version of Windows is being shipped from Redmond -- but it's impossible to ignore the increasing drumbeat of announcements that Windows 98 is about to be unleashed upon the industry. Assuming that the Department of Justice doesn't surprise us with some last-minute sanctions, it's reasonable to assume that Microsoft will begin shipping the "official" version of the operating system sometime in the next 60-90 days.