Many CM experts are familiar with the guidance found in the IEEE, ISO, and ANSI/EIA industry standards. But if you want to really accelerate your agile development, it is wise to learn what is involved with implementing such industry standards. Bob Aiello explains the different types of standards and how organizations go about creating them.

This article exposes the risks and hidden costs involved in the seemingly innocent decision of which third-party APIs to use to gather and report data, offload critical functionality, and save implementation time. It addresses some typical reasons the decision-making process over third-party use is overlooked, as well as how to make good choices confidently and consistently.

Software code audits can be arduous and time-consuming, as today’s software projects use a mix of proprietary, commercial, and open source software. This article outlines a number of methods to simplify and streamline your audit process and understand the best practices in organizing, documenting, labeling, tracking, and managing open source and third-party content brought into software portfolios.

Change control exists to review and approve important modifications, but done wrong, you chance confusion, chaos, failures, and outages. Poorly run change control wastes everyone’s time, but far worse is the missed opportunity to assess and manage risk. Here, Bob Aiello gets you up to speed on the lost art of change control.