... software development is achieving business goals. Where people's opinions diverge is on how to ensure that you achieve your goals. Take, for example, Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software Ltd. in Basingstoke, England. Armitage says that you should push the testing of business apps into the hands of end users, and he claims that his company's TestDrive-Gold product is intuitive enough for business types to build tests without having to write scripts. In fact, even if they wanted to write scripts, they couldn't with TestDrive-Gold, because there's no scripting language built into the product, Armitage says. It's all done with a visual user interface. The software lets users see how an app functions and then report back to developers about what they like and what they don't. Currently, the product works only with applications on IBM 's iSeries systems. But Armitage says that he expects to deliver a version this year for any apps built on Oracle databases, regardless of the operating environment. An average sale, he says, starts at about $100,000.

Adam Warshaw, president of DataVelocity Inc. in West Paterson, N.J., contends that you still need to give software developers tools to judge for themselves how their handiwork is doing in the field. Warshaw says the products that are included in DataVelocity's Erudition suite let developers "score their project against what the business wants." For example, they can evaluate proposed changes to an application and see how those changes would affect dependencies within the program's code and with external applications -- something business users hardly concern themselves with. Erudition will be available in two weeks via a managed service starting at $50 per user monthly.