In an earlier Advisor (" Know When to Say When: The Difficulty in Discontinuing Failing and Failed IT Projects," 10 July 2002), I had briefly discussed the potential problems with capitalizing IT expenses. In light of recent happenings at WorldCom, what was a potential problem has become a reality.

This past week, The Economist (20-26 July 2002) published a special survey on the US defense industry. The wide-ranging article touches on many topics, but I like the general comments it makes on strategy.

A favorite quote of mine is, "Reputation is who you are in the light ... character is who you are in the dark." I don't know who said it, but it never fails to motivate me to try and do the best that I can, especially if no one is watching. I've been thinking about this quote a lot lately, especially in relation to the quality of code that developers write.

There's nothing like an annual trip to the other side of the world to get a good perspective on one's life. It was almost exactly a year ago that I traveled to Bangalore to attend the annual shareholder's meeting of an Indian outsourcing firm that I'm involved with (http://www.mascotsystems.com), and I was curious to see what had changed when I returned again this year.

Everyone knows that Microsoft is interested in Web services. It is in the process of rolling out a completely new component model, collectively known as .NET, to support XML, SOAP, and all the associated technologies.

My favorite status report of all time was one that clearly signified to me that the so-called project manager was not fit for the responsibilities. It was a product selection project where RFPs had been sent to a number of vendors, and the responses needed to be evaluated by a team of reviewers who would make the vendor selection decision.

A one-page project mission statement is way too long, I've found. Here are some reasons:

One benefit of running executive education courses is that I get to talk with a large number of IT executives in a forum that encourages us to think about issues. Last month, I helped run one at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that included more than 50 IT executives. During meals and coffee breaks, we spent a good deal of time talking about outsourcing and Web services.

I was trying to explain the changing middleware scene to a friend recently and realized just how complex it is. Let's see if I can do it for you.

The arrival of Web services has been heralded with great fanfare, and the noise -- as usual -- has drowned out the real message. The publish/subscribe metaphor, where one publishes a service -- such as a well-defined business process -- and others subscribe to that service, offers a new take on process integration and automation.