An old saying reminds us, "Be careful of what you wish for; you may actually get it." One example of this in IT development organizations is the "virtual team" -- a project team whose members physically" belong to other parts of the company or to outsourcing firms. The appearance of such teams is often part of an overall outsourcing strategy, or a move to downsize an IT "empire" that has become bloated and inefficient.

From time to time, it's useful to step back and ponder the imponderable, what the macro trends in the IT products and services marketplace look like. Our travels permit some insights:

We think the use of software to solve problems has been evolutionary, that initially it was nearly completely technology-driven: we were limited to what could be done with the early architectures so we defined (and redefined) problems around those constraints. As the technology matured, the range of problems to which it could be applied grew.

During a project management seminar in Toronto last week, I had a very interesting discussion with the other participants on the subject of overtime. I have the strong opinion that many of today's so-called RAD projects succeed because (a) they're relatively short, usually lasting no more than 3-6 months, and (b) they often involve interesting technology, such as client-server or Internet/Web.

What about all this virtual stuff? To a significant extent it is -- of course -- overblown, but there are some trends that will impact how you align technology to virtual business processes. Here are a few worth noting:

The structured analysis/design methodologies that my colleagues and I developed in the 1970s and 1980s are often described as "obsolete" by those who advocate object-oriented methods such as UML. But in survey after survey that I conduct in software engineering seminars, I continue to find that only 20%-30% of the project teams claim to be using OO methods. So, what are all the other project teams doing?

As a Mac user, I'm part of that stubborn 3% of the marketplace that doesn't really care which version of Windows is being shipped from Redmond -- but it's impossible to ignore the increasing drumbeat of announcements that Windows 98 is about to be unleashed upon the industry. Assuming that the Department of Justice doesn't surprise us with some last-minute sanctions, it's reasonable to assume that Microsoft will begin shipping the "official" version of the operating system sometime in the next 60-90 days.

About once a year, my wife nags me about visiting the doctor for my annual checkup. I procrastinate as long as I can, because I know that the doctor is going to tell me that I'm 20 pounds overweight. Each year, I ask him, with the innocence of a saint, "Doctor, how could this have happened?" His answer is always the same: "One ounce at a time."

"But how can I get rid of this extra weight?" I ask, always hoping there will be a new answer.

But it's the same answer every year: "Eat less. Exercise more."

It's all changing around you. Customers, employees, technology, and management. Understanding this change is essential to business-IT alignment. Here are some clear trends in the way we think about products, services, technology, and the application of technology.

For a few weeks in January, the British computer company ICL investigated the possibility of hiring prisoners for their Y2000 projects. This generated a number of jokes on the Internet, but my reaction was probably a little different than most: I thought to myself, "Well, at least they'll have decent offices to work in."

If the Truth Be Told ...

Some organizations have good experiences with outsourcing, and some have disastrous ones. While there are all sorts of reasons why outsourcing deals go south, there are a few steps you can take early on to improve the likelihood of a successful outsouricng experience.

One of the amazing aspects of the enterprise software craze is the expectation that this stuff can actually be installed easily and used productively.

Welcome to The Y2000 E-Mail Advisor, a weekly electronic briefing from Ed Yourdon, Director of the Cutter Consortium's Y2000 Advisory Service.

The announcement a few months ago that New York Governor George Pataki had imposed a moratorium on all noncritical state IT development efforts until the agencies could demonstrate Y2000 compliance didn't get a lot of attention.