Whether implicitly or explicitly, portfolio management has always been a key function of IT management. Selecting which projects to undertake, allocating resource levels to projects, and monitoring results across projects are key portfolio management activities.

Anyone involved in developing component-based software is probably aware that a growing number of people are advocating "new" software methodologies. In the US, these new methodologies are typically called Extreme Programming (XP -- http://www.extremeprogramming.org).

There are two main requirements for the success of IT projects, particularly the critical, fast-moving projects associated with e-business: alignment with business needs and rapid, low-cost delivery. Both can be achieved through effective project management practices. On these e-projects, alignment means achieving effective and rapid-response requirements management.

Oracle recently ran into trouble with some of its packaged application customers when it announced it was planning to discontinue support for version 10.7 of Oracle Applications.

According to Cutter Consortium, the biggest problem facing project managers today is a lack of direction.

In my latest industry survey, "Survey of e-Business and IT Practices" (available now from Cutter Consortium), one question asks: What are the top limitations to getting more from IT in your company? Respondents' top three answers were funding, lack of business strategy, and, tied for third place, available IT staff and available business staff. IT staffing, in one form or another, is a perennial issue, but IT staffing's high ranking in these latest results shows that it is particularly pressing at this time.

I'm as cynical as most and the first to admit that a column entitled "Trust" is likely to offer platitudes. Like honesty and ethics, we all claim to believe in them. It's simply a matter of applying such a nice-sounding concept in everyday situations.

At the last Cutter Consortium Summit (April 2001, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; http://www.cutter.com/summit/), Cutter Consortium Senior Consultants Lou Russell and Tim Lister did an outstanding presentation on IT organizational transformation. During the panel discussion, I said that changing a culture takes about 9-18 months.

The term "personalization" is being thrown around so much by vendors and marketing folks that it's now used to describe almost any sort of customer interaction tool or application. As a result, there is some confusion as to what "personalization" actually entails.

I've just returned from a whirlwind business trip to India, my first since January of this year. In January, the US recession and associated slowdown in IT spending were recognized as significant events, but the common opinion was that Indian vendors would be relatively unaffected.

One of the core practices of agile modeling (AM) is active stakeholder participation.

I continue to see references to companies developing enterprise knowledge portals, business intelligence (BI) portals, customer relationship management portals, and even balanced scorecard portals.

I usually stay away from books with cutesy names, but I finally picked this one up because it showed up on many best-seller lists. First, Break All the Rules , by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman (Simon & Schuster, 1999, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/