The Smart Grid: Managing Electrical Power Distribution and Use
(September 2009) The smart grid is the use of digital technology to modernize the power grid, which comes with some new privacy and security challenges.

Documenting Software Architectures Podcast
(June 2009) Paul Clements talks about best practices for communicating (documenting) software architectures and summarizes key points from the book Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond and the related two-day course, Documenting Software Architectures.

Podcast: Becoming A Smart Buyer of Software
(June 2008) In this podcast, Brian Gallagher, former director of the Acquisition Support Program at the SEI, discusses what business leaders need to know when acquiring or purchasing software, along with implications for security.

Evaluating Service-Oriented Architectures
(June 2008) The emergence of service-oriented architecture (SOA) as an approach for integrating applications that expose services presents many new challenges to organizations resulting in significant risks to their business. Particularly important among those risks are failures to effectively address quality attribute requirements such as performance, availability, security, and modifiability. Because the risk and impact of SOA are distributed and pervasive across applications, it is critical to perform an architecture evaluation early in the software life cycle. This report contains technical information about SOA design considerations and tradeoffs that can help the architecture evaluator to identify and mitigate risks in a timely and effective manner. The report provides an overview of SOA, outlines key architecture approaches and their effect on quality attributes, establishes an organized collection of design-related questions that an architecture evaluator may use to analyze the ability of the architecture to meet quality requirements, and provides a brief sample evaluation.

Groundbreaking Best-Practices Model for Acquiring IT & Technical Products and Services
(November 2007) Listen to the news conference held in Detroit on 11/7/2007. Acquisitions of information technology (IT) and technical products and services help drive the worldwide economy but - until now - no comprehensive best-practices model existed to specifically ensure quality outcomes between acquirers and suppliers. Today, the SEI - along with General Motors’ Information Systems and Services department and top officials from HP, Capgemini and the U.S. government - formally unveiled a comprehensive new model, called CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ), that it believes will revolutionize the way governments and businesses worldwide acquire or outsource their software-intensive systems and services.

Improving Software Architecture Competence
(March 2007) Improving Software Architecture Competence by Paul Clements, International Association of Software Architects (IASA), March 2007.

The CMMI Song
(March 2007) A light-hearted song about everyone's favorite process improvement model. by Joe Wickless

Best Practices in Software Architecture
(June 2006) Best Practices in Software Architecture, by Paul Clements