Too Little Time
Software development projects fail or fail to deliver often because organizations are unwilling to apply the appropriate level of resources to the project or pick projects beyond their resources ("Bugged About Software: How Hard Can It Be?" Jan. 22). Often the resource most needed is time. They want too much done in too little time.

It reminds me of the saying about software development: You can have it fast, you can have it good, you can have it cheap; pick any two. That may apply to all product development or any creative process.

Ray Rathburn
IT Systems Supervisor
Social Security Administration
Seattle

What Users Want
Software project failures are often a result of communications problems and arrogance. Both problems are intimately related.

How often have you used a program that didn't provide the features that you need to do your job? Were the features in the program but difficult to find or missing? Understanding the end users' needs and capturing them in software is the key to a successful software project. As technology professionals, we have an obligation to create what the end user wants--not our view of their world, but their view.

I directed a project to deliver workflow management tools to construction workers who open streets, exposing power and gas lines for repair. I joined my development team on the streets of New York interviewing workers to understand their needs and capture their requirements. I repeated the process with management.

The field workers were initially computer phobic and very apprehensive about losing their jobs to technology. By the end of the project, they were enthusiastic supporters.

Clear communications with end users and the elimination of arrogance won't ensure the success of a software development project but will certainly improve the odds.

John Manzella
CTO, Kreltec
Massapequa Park, N.Y.

Retailers Must Step Up
Banks already secure data ("Analyst: Banks Must Make Credit Card Accounts Useless To Data Thieves," Jan. 24). Retailers should respect data.

As a member of the financial services industry, I'm disturbed that you would call for banks, credit unions, and other short-term credit card lenders to invest millions of dollars in a security infrastructure to do work that should be done by retailers and credit card processors. If retailers want to offer credit card processing to customers as an ease-of-use payment option, then they must assume the responsibility and related costs involved in reducing customer risk.

It's bad enough that there's no reimbursement to financial lenders who have to replace thousands of cards when processors lose customer data. What's worse is that current laws don't even allow those lenders to tell a customer who was responsible for the data loss. So banks and credit unions take the hit to their image when TJX loses people's personal information (information they were never supposed to store beyond the completion of the transaction).

Retailers and card processors simply need to stop storing data that they're told not to store. And like any private company or government agency, they should implement sufficient security measures to ensure that unauthorized people don't have access to their networks.

Matt Weidler
Political Action Liaison, ECCU
Brea, Calif.

Greed Isn't Good
This disparity between the top few and the rest of the workforce is unique to this country ("Is Exec Pay Excessive? Don't Snap To Judgment," Jan. 15). These pay levels are the result of greed and no backbone on the part of board members. Rob Preston seems to be making a case that it's "class warfare" and "envy" that's behind the outcry about these excesses. No, it's wrong when Randy Mott makes $15 million per year, and it's wrong to pay a baseball player $126 million over seven years. I make more than minimum wage and I'm sure that others in my pay scale are just as appalled as I am by these pay levels.

What do you think a politician is worth? Do you actually think that raising the president's pay level will attract a higher level of talent to run?

There is a lot of executive talent out there and if the pay were "only" $2 million a year, I would wager that there would be a number of top candidates fighting for the job.

Gary Esterling
President, Advantage Bearing Technologies
South Elgin, Ill.