The year ahead likely will be filled with unprecedented challenges in terms of both technology and business demands. While technology and business needs are certainly complex, the people and personality issues may be even more challenging to deal with. This article will get you started with tackling some of these people-related challenges that you will likely encounter in the coming year.

In his CM: The Next Generation Series, Joe Farah examines the following three steps that deal with process: defining the process, automating the process, and improving process quality. When a process is automated, problems can be repeated and are much easier to diagnose and correct. As the problems are corrected, we attain higher quality.

Build and deployment are two of the most essential functions that are performed by the configuration management guru. In some ways, they represent the beginning and the end of the release management life cycle. Bob Aiello describes how to develop an effective build and deployment solution complete with all of the other steps that are required as well.

The isaca Cobit 4.1 framework has thirty-four IT processes which include a considerable amount of information on exactly how to establish effect IT controls and, more importantly, successfully meet your IT compliance requirements. Bob Aiello takes a walk through each of the Cobit controls and discuss, in practical terms, how improved processes can be successfully implemented and supported.