Things are changing -- again. But this time the changes are more profound and definitely more permanent. We're entering a new era of partnership between technology and business. These two camps are inseparable now, and business models and processes cannot be implemented without operational and strategic technology. Such technologies as Web 2.0, business intelligence (BI), cloud computing, and social media are changing the business technology optimization game. The way we think about saving money or making money with technology has dramatically changed.

Shortly after any new idea, the inevitable query, "how long will this take?" is sure to follow. We hope that this question sparks an analytical estimate of the work involved and the effort required, but for some of you, this question may only rekindle images of your last project's death march, where an unrealistic deadline was foisted on you. In this Advisor, we look at the estimation process and some approaches for mitigating a few of its inherent challenges.

For Cutter Benchmark Review (CBR), Cutter Consortium has conducted three annual worldwide surveys about IT budget practices, and, in 2008, conducted a worldwide survey about dynamic IT and the impact of IT governance on the ability of companies to be dynamic. The participants were global in scope (about half from North America with the remaining from other parts of the world). In 2008, Cutter Mexico conducted its own survey with Latin American participants using questions about both IT budget and IT governance. This Executive Update reviews those results. The purpose is to compare and contrast the Latin American results with our world results, making observations and recommendations along the way.

There are five things that everyone better do over the next 12-18 months: 1) rethink and (re-) develop your overall business technology strategies; 2) redesign and redeploy your computing and communications architectures; 3) rethink and re-implement your technology delivery strategies; 4) re-organize your technology organizations with special attention to business technology skills gaps; 5) identify and implement meaningful and measurable technology performance metrics. These five areas define the decisions that must be made as the business technology field fundamentally changes from the world we understood just five years ago. Is there some urgency here? Absolutely, because the nature of the changes we've been tracking is so profound that a misstep here could cost a great deal of time, effort and money.