To get beyond the superficial news one gets in newspapers and on TV, I try to read the Economist each week. In the 15 November issue, it had an article on the economic upturn that included the following comment:

Marcella, a product manager, has noticed a growing interest in using Extreme Programming (XP) practices among the developers in her company. People are curious; they talk about refactoring, test-driven development, and pair programming. They talk about simplicity, iterative delivery, and being close to the customer.

Everyone wants to improve the predictability and certainty of software development. Given the number of failures and missed deadlines, how can anyone possibly run a business or anticipate how to use new functionality without knowing when the system will be finished and how much it will cost?

A million downloads in three days. That's how many people grabbed a copy of Apple's iTunes for Windows software right after it was released. I confess, I'm one of those million.

The focus of supplier assessment needs to shift from simply evaluating the ability of a supplier to deliver toward jointly exploring the possible challenges of working together and soliciting input on what the customer could do to ensure a successful partnership.

The benefits of the two-way assessment approach are threefold: