Over the past several months, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Paul Harmon has been studying the Extensible Markup Language (XML) as it facilitates business process improvement -- a growing trend. This month's Cutter Benchmark Review presents Harmon's research and analysis to help you determine how best to take advantage of the developing technologies that are enabling the integration of business processes.

Cutter Consortium's tag line is "Leveraging IT for Competitive Advantage." Integral to leveraging IT is managing the many relationships IT departments and IT professionals develop in the course of their work. Today's IT professional must be a people-person.

As highlighted in this month's issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, the terms "success" and "failure" are not black and white. Unfortunately, IT efforts are often forced into one category or the other without regard as to why they're successful or have failed -- and whether "failure" may have in fact been the best possible outcome. The articles that follow provide some criteria you may want to add to your own when labeling your projects as successful or failed.