You need an application delivered fast. And you’re willing to pay more to get it done quickly. But how much more should you pay?

That depends of course on your supplier’s productivity. The more productive they are, the more they can charge on a per-hour basis. That’s because their productivity enables them to deliver the same size application in fewer hours than a less productive supplier would be able to. Which means that the cost to deliver a function point (function point per $) might actually be less than a supplier whose labor rates are much lower!  In other words, a supplier with a higher labor cost can actually be more cost efficient – and at the end of the day, this output metric – cost efficiency – is what matters. (Along with application quality, as we'll see a bit later.)

Major stock exchanges suffering embarrassing technology breakdowns that have left some traders resorting to placing trades over old-fashioned phone lines! What next, ticker tape?

The intensity and speed of Agile development puts a premium on satisfying the functional requirements of business users. But this intense focus comes at the expense of structural quality.

There are plenty of "...for dummies" materials out there. This one is for smarties. So buckle up!

A couple of weeks ago, Dave West, Principal Analyst from Forrester and I had a chat about Agile.

October 26th marked CAST's second annual Partner Conference. It was packed, with more than double the number of attendees this year compared to 2009.

How do you scale Agile for the enterprise? Hear Rebecca Parsons of ThoughtWorks and Bill Curtis of CAST discuss the keys to scaling Agile techniques --the metrics and processes that are required to take the next leap in Agile.

As overheard by Dr. Bill Curtis at last week's Agile Conference. Coined by Jeff Sutherland, one of the co-inventors of SCRUM.

Bill presented the 10 commandments of multisourcing covering governance, SLAs, and best practices. Here are some salient points from his presentation.

Industry data demonstrate that code reviews are highly effective.

C.K. Chesterton wrote, “The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his mother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."

Running an ERP system? Having any of these problems?

Join me and Tony Timbol of David Consulting Group on Thursday, May 13 for a joint DCG-CAST Webinar.

What's the biggest cultural change that companies who use CAST undergo?

If you're like most (don't deny it), here's how you do resource estimation for IT projects.

Corner of 26th St. and 6th Ave in NYC at 2 AM? Good to be big!

Kickoff 2010! Every year, the entire company gathers in one physical location to strengthen relationships, forge new ones, and internalize CAST's values and goals. Kickoff 2010 was super! I was delighted to meet some good friends and make many new ones.  The intelligence and creativity of CAST folks is impressive -- no wonder we are THE Application Intelligence company.

Data from IBM below shows striking failure rates on the requirements for PCI compliance (it's from 2008, but nothing gives me any confidence that companies actually got better at this in 2009).

Yesterday CAST  hosted a breakfast for IT leaders in government agencies - one of the themes was moving applications to the Cloud.  I was surprised (and relieved) to see so many agencies represented - FEMA, DHS, SEC, NASA, and the Defense Intelligence Agency just to name a few. 

It's that time of year when we look back...and forward to what software development will be like. Here's a short piece from Bill Curtis, CAST SVP and Chief Scientist from the Wall Street Journal (November 16, 2009).

A recent article from James Powell of Enterprise Systems magazine on software quality -- it's a Q&A format with yours truly providing the A.

I'm tired of hearing "You can't manage what you can't measure." If you're older than 6, you know Santa is a fiction. If you're older than 11, you don't need me to break it to you that of course you can manage what you can't measure. There's big money in that.

Four Reasons for measuring application quality for SOA Development, Rollout, and Governance

Might sound like an oxymoron, but it's not.

There's a big bias towards skill in our culture -- smart and creative trumps hard work and grinding it out day after day.

Types of Process Frameworks:

I'd like to know Antonella! But it's not what you think.

A couple of years ago, I took the 14-hour Qantas flight from Los Angeles to Sydney and back.

Some tools are very popular with software developers while some just fizzle out. What accounts for this difference?>

Closing the Gap Between the Testing and Production Environment

There are a lot of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tools out there. And there's a lot of hot air about the distinctions between PPM, ALM,  PLM, and who-knows-what-other-M.

A couple of weeks ago, I was standing in an old friend's flat in London, looking out onto the street, sipping a delicious drink before dinner. Lovely flat, beautiful street.