Why is technology transfer so hard?

If you were the vice president of software in a company with 10,000 software personnel, what would you do to make sure your software team had state-of-the-art tools and methodologies? At a more fundamental level, how would you and your staff even find out what they are and whether your current tools and methodologies are good, bad, or average? That is the crux of two major challenges to the software community: How do we evaluate tools and methods for effectiveness? How do we deploy better tools and methods once they have been identified? Unfortunately, the software industry lacks standard measurements and benchmarks for evaluating the effectiveness of programming tools and languages, design approaches, or almost any other kind of technology. Purchasing and acquisition decisions are often made on the basis of unsubstantiated vendor claims. Moreover, once a new tool or methodology is acquired, deployment is often slow. Tools are acquired without considering training needs, or if training is considered, it's not readily available due to schedule pressures.<
>