Currently in the editing and production queue, for publication in the next couple of weeks, are the following documents by Yours Truly:

• The role of product management in Agile development.
• The role of product management in software as a service (SaaS).
• NEW! The questions people have been asking us about Agile, and what they reveal about the state of Agile development practices.

Also in the works is a piece that I'm co-authoring with Thomas Keitt about serious gaming as a tool for requirements collection. Updates on the exact publication date of these documents are coming soon.

Unfortunately, the document about the future of CRM is coming next month. I'll give you a more exact ETA, Dear Reader, as soon as I can.

Hi, I'd still like to hear your feedback on this, but wanted to update you on these definitions. Randy Heffner completed editing my report yesterday, and improved the definitions to this:

SOA interoperability is the ability of SOA services and infrastructure to work together by efficiently exchanging information at a specified quality of service level using common formats and protocols, which may be accomplished, at least in part, using mediation.

SOA federation enables diverse domains of SOA services and infrastructure to interoperate seamlessly and transparently as one by delegating among the SOA domains responsibilities such as service location, security, activation, mediation, policy enforcement, ensuring high quality-of-service (QoS), and many others.

So please respond to these new, improved versions!

Thanks,
Mike Gilpin

PS: Max, I saw your post. I think you have a good point, that done the wrong way, SOA can be too complex, and that federation can just be an effort to put lipstick on a pig (and yes, I chose that phrase on purpose!). But even in a well planned and good SOA implementation, these issues of interoperability and federation still come up.

By Ted Schadler

Following on to Rob's great analyses of Cisco's Jabber and PostPath acquisitions, here are some additional things that Information & Knowledge Management Professionals should tune into regarding Cisco as the new collaboration kid on the block:

• First, Cisco is building a meeting-centric workspace product with WebEx Connect. Think about the key documents, chats, connections, calendar, contact lists, business and collaboration widgets, and video links hosted in a workspace with persistence, invitation- and approval-based access, and all the piece parts of a real workspace. That means you should be putting Cisco on your vendor list when looking at new team collaboration scenarios.
• Second, Jabber will be bundled into WebEx Connect as the core presence engine. In other words, this acquisition is, as Rob pointed out, a great way for Cisco to get a global-scale presence engine. But it's also presence designed around a B2B or distributed team environment. And that signals where you should look at Cisco: It's in B2B teams. Or teams that sit on the edge of the enterprise -- sales, product development, supply chain, partner management -- should look at this new option.

A change in tone for my blog today. This story with links is more to do with Corporate Social Responsibility than Customer Experience. It just happens to be what's on my mind right now...

If it weren't for the financial melt down, I'm sure that the tainted milk scandal would be top of the news agenda in Japan today. This isn't the first time that the safety of Chinese products has come into question - and it won't be the last.

If customers don't trust your company, it's bound to be bad for business. The FEER blog points to a noodle shop in Hong Kong, which is seeking to reassure customers by printing expiry dates on the noodles themselves.

But how does one deal with a collapse of trust in an entire country? Whenever a new scare threatens Chinese exports, we hear about new legislation, increased inspections, and draconian punishments. But it seems that the underlying problems are endemic and can't be easily rooted out.