As 2004 winds down, I want to comment one more time on a trend that I predict will grow in the year ahead and throughout the rest of this decade. I expect that large companies will become better at dividing business processes into two groups and maintaining those that are really vital while outsourcing those that are essentially "commodity processes."

Business continuity management (BCM) is a term used to describe the ability of an organization to provide uninterrupted business operations in the case of "extra-ordinary" operational risk events. Traditionally, BCM has concerned disaster-related events such as fires, floods, hurricanes, and so on, but with the advent of IT systems, such things as security breaches, system faults, or almost any event that could interrupt an organization's operations are also included in the BCM sphere.

I recently read an article in the Economist that talked about increased complexity in our lives. From new devices like mobile phones to previously simple devices like alarm clocks, we are constantly being exposed to more and more complexity. This is also the case with technology products and application development, and comes with a high cost in frustration and lost productivity.

About five years ago, Extreme Programming (XP) emerged as a software development methodology and became an alternative to the existing heavyweight and plan-driven approaches. While many have embraced XP, others view XP as heresy for defying established software engineering doctrine.

Agile software development and project management (ASDPM) is geared to managing uncertainty -- uncertainty related to "ends" (customer objectives and requirements) and uncertainty related to "means" (technology and people).

IT security issues are now becoming a priority enterprise operational risk (i.e., risks created by a corporation's dependence on its systems, processes, and staff) to be managed. Corporate and government spending on IT security has jumped from 2% to 3% of the IT department's budget five years ago to 8% or more this year [1].

Sarbanes-Oxley wasn't a very well thought-out law. It was written in response to corporate corruption and seeks to solve a problem with a rather complicated system that it imposes on every business operating in the US. The original deadlines for the act were so unrealistic that they were extended and are only now beginning to come due.

In team sports such as software development, the key to success is adequate communication. Peter Drucker once stated that it is the recipient who communicates, and without the recipient, there cannot be any communications. If a tree falls in the forest to produce a specification that nobody reads, can a software system be built?