Columns

Bulked up and buff

• By Michael Alexander
• October 1, 2005

Software configuration management has a whole new look. As Alan Radding writes in this month’s cover story, SCM has moved from simple versioning tools to addressing everything from tracking business requirements to enforcing and automating the development process. New times require better tools. In this case, SCM owes its muscular new look to the need to better manage globally dispersed development teams and to comply with fed regs.

Alan Joch checks in with a story on how some enterprise software developers are taking a counterintuitive approach to collaborating with their peers on the business side. Instead of jumping right into projects, these programmers are devoting more time to analyzing their resources and requirements and sparring with senior managers to make sure that deadlines aren’t only tight, but also that they’re reasonable. Writes Joch: These nonconformists are devotees of Personal Software Process and Team Software Process, two intertwined methodologies that offer formal processes for improving software quality and managing schedules.

Paul Korzenowski and I go back a long way in this business, and I was pleased he was able to turn in his first piece for ADT on how enterprises are turning to mobile middleware to sync up a growing variety of portable handhelds they must contend with. Paul is working on another story for us on content management for next month’s issue.

Regular contributor John K. Waters looked into the promise of business services management, which is aimed at forging the missing link between IT operations and business management. But as he points out, BSM is a product category and not an IT approach or strategy.