Business-IT Strategies Executive Report Abstracts

2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000

2008 | Volume 11
Talking the Talk: What We Need to Tell the Uninitiated (Vol. 11, No. 4)

Communication is the essence of productivity. For decades, technology professionals treated the uninitiated -- the nontechnology executives and managers -- as though they were somehow inferior to the keepers of the digitalia. But the more nontechnology executives and managers understand about technology trends, opportunities, and best practices, the better it is for them. A little knowledge is truly a dangerous thing, so it behooves us to think about how -- and what -- to communicate to these professionals. This Executive Report by Stephen J. Andriole focuses on just that: communicating the IT story by identifying trends, opportunities, and best practices in hardware, networks, data, software, and services. The communication key is to link all of these to two investment outcomes: making money and saving money. Put another way, if you want to get the attention of nontechnology executives and managers, help them do one, or both, of these things.

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Building a Craft-Based IT Organization: A Case Study (Vol. 11, No. 3)

Designing the right IT organization can make the difference between IT success and failure. Too often, the need to build traditional hierarchies to preserve power structures, placate business executives, or just keep the peace often prevents IT executives from designing optimal IT organizations. This Executive Report by Vince Kellen explores a case study that examines a craft-based IT organization in use at DePaul University and describes in detail the key concepts and the implementation approach for this nonhierarchical, passion-driven, knowledge-based, flexible, and agile IT structure.

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ITIL V3: It's About Business Value, Not Technology (Vol. 11, No. 2)

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a best practices framework, and its most recent version introduces what can be described as strategic, operational, and technical process guidance with almost transformative power for organizations that adopt it. ITIL version 3 (ITIL V3) outlines how to achieve IT management process excellence by leveraging a lifecycle approach to service delivery. As some IT organizations are learning, a service-quality focus injects a level of operational discipline scarcely known in the past. This Executive Report by John Berry explores the latest five volumes of ITIL within the service lifecycle framework.

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Strategic Business Planning: From Also-Ran to Market Innovator -- A Case Study (Vol. 11, No. 1)

This is the story about PD Circuits, Inc. (PDC), a small New England business that, for many years, viewed itself as a manufacturing company. It struggled to compete with similar companies around the world by delivering a higher level of quality products than its competitors. Yet it never seemed to be able to differentiate itself much -- even while it achieved near perfection for on-time delivery and customer acceptance. Today, PDC has redefined itself as a new breed of printed circuit board (PCB) supplier, creating a new market niche as a PCB supply chain services manager. How did the company achieve this transformation? What factors created this insight? What role has IT played in the company's success? This Executive Report by David N. Rasmussen describes PDC's journey and the critical success factors for its innovation.

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2007 | Volume 10
A (Good) Fox in the Henhouse: Internal Consulting Meets Alignment (Vol. 10, No. 12)

This Executive Report by Stephen J. Andriole focuses on how to foster the growth of internal consultants within your organization by examining the process, knowledge, and skills necessary for effective internal consulting. The report explores the two prerequisites to successful internal consulting: mastery of the consulting process and business technology knowledge. Effective internal consultants are good at assessing the political culture of their companies and the impact that organizational structures and politics have on the problem-solving process. The call in this report is for the "professionalization" and certification of internal consultants.

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Information Technology Asset Management: Everyone Should Be Doing It (Vol. 10, No. 11)

Does your organization coordinate procurement, use configuration management databases to maintain and upgrade software and hardware, or leverage a well-conceived hardware disposal process that considers environmental, legal, and financial implications? If the answer is yes, congratulations, you have embraced the management methodology called information technology asset management (ITAM), even if you have never heard of it before. In this Executive Report, John Berry will help readers gain a better understanding of how a comprehensive ITAM strategy can help them reduce costs, avoid costs, and mitigate risks. Some of you are already on your way.

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Human Capital Management: A Rare Source of Competitive Advantage? (Vol. 10, No. 10)

In this Executive Report by John Berry, managers can explore several case studies that demonstrate how a few organizations captured real dollar value from a strategy that looks at their workforce as an asset with value-creating potential and not just as a cost. Readers not familiar with human capital management are introduced to the tools of this management trade that, each in their own way, support greater value creation from people. This report also offers a useful baseline for organizations considering a human capital management strategy.

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Five Technology Trends That Matter: What the Early 21st Century Is Telling Us About Tomorrow (Vol. 10, No. 9)

This Executive Report by Steve Andriole focuses on five broad business technologies that deserve our attention: software development and delivery; Web 2.0; master data management for business intelligence; convergence CRM; and access devices. The report also addresses the combined effect of the technologies and details specific steps companies can take to exploit these trends.

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Going Green with IT: Your Responsibility Toward Environmental Sustainability (Vol. 10, No. 8)

Increasingly, IT is contributing to environmental problems and, as such, must be part of the solution. IT must go green and help create a sustainable environment. Greening your IT systems and their use is both an economic and an environmental imperative, as well as your social responsibility. This Executive Report by San Murugesan examines the environmental impacts of IT and shows you how to go green with your IT systems and harness the new opportunities that arise.

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Business Process Modeling Fundamentals (Vol. 10, No. 7)

Increasingly, business experts look at highly effective, highly integrated business processes as a key ingredient in maintaining a "sustainable competitive advantage." Business process modeling is both a language and an approach to: (1) document current, "as-is" business processes; (2) come up with innovative, "to-be" business processes; and (3) develop a migration plan for managing the transition from (1) to (2). This Executive Report by Ken Orr discusses the key concepts and strategies involved in business process innovation. It covers the major threads of business process thinking: the logical diagrams/tools used in doing the modeling, the process of business process modeling, and management of business process projects.

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Managing Technical People in Conflict (Vol. 10, No. 6)

Conflict is normal, and so long as it remains task-related and productive can provide great benefits to a team. Managing technical employees in conflict presents unique challenges since these individuals are often conflict-avoidant and take disagreements personally. Effective conflict management requires you to anticipate and detect conflicts early, have excellent listening and communication skills, and have structures and processes that make unproductive conflict less likely. By employing these tactics, you will end up with a happier and more productive workforce as well as improved results from your team.

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Managing and Modernizing Legacy Applications (Vol. 10, No. 5)

Most IT organizations treat legacy applications as overhead rather than as valuable business assets. They spend considerable sums of money operating and maintaining these applications yet invest little in improving their returns to the business. This Executive Report by Ian Hayes and Gerry Leitão examines how to evaluate and improve the value of legacy application portfolios, reviews the range of options available to modernize and better manage legacy assets, and demonstrates the value of proactive application management.

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The Business Orchestra: What Can the IT Executive Learn from Music? (Vol. 10, No. 4)

Do you play a musical instrument? Do you sing? Did you ever study music or play in a band? Many of us have. In fact, studies show that a musical background is a key factor for recruiting successful software development workers. Now, take that a step further and think about the similarities between leading a band and leading an IT business. This Executive Report by David N. Rasmussen explores those similarities and identifies critical success factors that are common to both. Beyond focusing our management attention on the technical attributes of IT, what can we learn from successful musical organizations that can help us better deliver outstanding IT performances that exceed stakeholder expectations?

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Architectures Then and Now (Vol. 10, No. 3)

In this Executive Report, Kenneth Rau explores three basic ubiquitous architectures (business process, data, and application), what they represent, why they should be created, and how to go about their construction. In addition, he addresses the less ubiquitous organization and location architectures. History and lessons learned from the use of various IS architectures over the last 40 years can tell us how, when, and where to best use these architectures today.

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The Program Management Office: Driving Value When Project Management Isn't Enough (Vol. 10, No. 2)

This Executive Report by John Berry will help managers acquire a quick but thorough understanding of what a program management office is -- a vehicle to ensure IT project success when several IT projects require simultaneous execution to support the realization of some higher business objective. With this understanding, readers will take away an understanding of what a program management office looks like functionally, its impact on IT project value creation, and -- most importantly -- a blueprint that can help them operationalize this relatively new, but powerful, IT management discipline and technique.

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Business Uses of Web 2.0: Potential and Prospects (Vol. 10, No. 1)

Web 2.0, the second phase in the evolution of the Web, offers enterprises new opportunities to leverage their business and engage their customers more effectively in their business processes. As this Executive Report by San Murugesan shows, it is time for enterprises -- both IT and non-IT -- to harness Web 2.0 to their advantage.

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2006 | Volume 9
The IT Manager as Leader: Taking Your Place at the Table (Vol. 9, No. 12)

How do you transition in your role as information technology manager to a strategic business leader within your company or organization? This Executive Report by Moshe Cohen examines today's business realities that define a new role for information technology within the corporation and discusses a paradigm for greater integration between the information and business goals of companies. The report also looks at the roles, behaviors, and skills that IT leaders must acquire in order to make the transition into leadership roles.

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Simplicity and Elegance in IT (Vol. 9, No. 11)

This Executive Report by Haim Kilov shows that simplicity and elegance in IT-related systems -- requested by both casual and business users of such systems -- is possible by means of clearly separating "what the system does" from "how the system works." As Dines Bjørner stated, "elegant, expressive, and revealing specifications" based on a simple and powerful system of concepts that are demonstrably agreed upon by both IT and non-IT experts are essential for designing and building systems that are "pleasing, have utility, and are fit for purpose."

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From the Balanced Scorecard to the Adaptive Scorecard: An Adaptive Maturity Model (Vol. 9, No. 10)

The Balanced Scorecard field faces at least five challenges. Two of those, both relevant to Balanced Scorecard impact, are addressed in this Executive Report by Joseph M. Firestone: the conceptual framework underlying scorecards and the problem of strengthening their measurement models. An Adaptive Maturity Model describing the path to a socially responsible Adaptive Scorecard distinguishing operational from intelligence performance measures, incorporating external impact measures, and distinguishing process/outcome and managing/doing measures is offered. The discussion includes both measurement techniques and related software tools.

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The Search for IT-Enabled Business Transformation: What It Is and How to Get There (Vol. 9, No. 9)

In today's value-oriented business climate, few functions within the organization are more maligned for failing to deliver value than IS. Yet examples abound of organizations that have exploited technology for competitive advantage and, in the process, transformed their industry. This Executive Report by Kenneth Rau explores the strategic fundamentals that must be considered, evolved, and aligned by organizations in pursuit of industry-altering technological advantage.

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Still and Always, It's About People: Optimizing the Human Factor in Business Technology (Vol. 9, No. 8)

This Executive Report by Steve Andriole focuses on the human factor in the business technology relationship. Prospective employees should pass through a set of filters, including raw intelligence, ambition, energy, personality, knowledge, politics, and culture. The report discusses each of these filters and presents some recommendations to optimize the business technology people relationship.

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Speaking the Same Language: Creating Understandable Business and IT Models (Vol. 9, No. 7)

This Executive Report by Haim Kilov discusses a simple yet powerful system of concepts successfully used to create clear and understandable business and IT models. Since shared domain knowledge is the only factor influencing both short- and long-term alignment between business and IT, such models are essential for business and IT decision making that is based on a sound foundation rather than on, as Barry Boehm -- one of the most respected names in the software world -- says, "ad hoc manual blends of politics, preconceptions, and pure salesmanship."

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Mobile Strategy: Benefiting from Mobile and Wireless Computing (Vol. 9, No. 6)

The mobile revolution created by handheld computers and wireless communications offers new promises and opportunities. To successfully embrace this new technology, enterprises need to create an innovative, holistic, value-based mobile strategy. This Executive Report by San Murugesan discusses how to create a winning mobile strategy and presents a roadmap for its successful implementation.

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Service Orientation: The Cultural Dimension (Vol. 9, No. 5)

This Executive Report by Paul Allen is the third in a series that aims to guide organizations through the challenges they face on the way to service orientation. The previous two reports focused largely on the methodological requirements for business process management, service-oriented architecture, and service-oriented management. We now focus on the key cultural challenges involved in achieving a holistic approach. In particular, we look at the central role of service-level management in making an effective transition to service orientation.

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The IT-Business Disconnect: IT Manager Work Behavior -- A Key Contributor (Vol. 9, No. 4)

There are hundreds of articles about IT-business alignment. The problem is they don't get to the heart of the issue. In this Executive Report by Mike Sisco, you will discover how who we are and our work-behavior tendencies prevent us from achieving success.

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Strategic Agility: Beyond IT (Vol. 9, No. 3)

Organizations today are minds and machines clasped together. Agility depends more and more on how fast teams can learn. However, how knowledge is created, shared, and exploited is still mysterious. Individual and organizational defensiveness are deeply rooted in human and organizational behavior and can prevent the learning needed to promote agility. To help build agile enterprises, IT professionals are going to need to understand much more than just technology.

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Searching for Digital Gold: Three Cases of Technology Due Diligence (Vol. 9, No. 2)

This Executive Report by Steve Andriole presents 15 due diligence criteria and then applies them to three distinct investment situations. The purpose of the report is to demonstrate the applicability of due diligence criteria to investment opportunities that occur within companies that apply technology, with venture capitalists that search for high-payoff technology investments, and within vendors that create technology.

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Agile-Adaptive Management Model: Building the Bridge from Innovation to Business Value (Vol. 9, No. 1)

This Executive Report by David Spann provides a model for agile-adaptive management and its associated business practices to help companies define purpose, hire great people, create something innovative, learn from things that work and don't work, and reliably deliver value-added results. The report provides a set of management tools and beliefs used to focus individuals, teams, and entire organizations on simultaneously creating value, building quality products/services, and meeting the customer's constantly changing needs.

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2005 | Volume 8
The Art of IT Strategic Planning: Building the Context (Vol. 8, No. 12)

Strategic plans can generate excitement and enthusiasm among constituents only if the planning outputs paint a picture of what is possible. Plans produced by rote or formula seldom succeed in doing this. This Executive Report by Kenneth Rau provides tools and techniques that may be placed on the pallet of the artists commissioned with depicting the current state of technology in their organization, along with guidance on when their use is appropriate.

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Open Source Software: The Tide Is Coming In (Vol. 8, No. 11)

Open source software (OSS) has spread beyond universities and research labs and is being widely used by corporations, municipalities, and governments. This Executive Report explains what companies like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo see in OSS; reveals how OSS packages are catching up to and overhauling the leading closed source products in several market sectors; and analyzes the critical impetus that vendors like IBM have given by working closely with OSS communities.

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Adaptive Enterprise Toolbox: Next Practices for the Knowledge-Based Economy (Vol. 8, No. 10)

This Executive Report by Borys Stokalski identifies the emergent management techniques and concepts that might become the best practices of tomorrow's business. It presents the "heuristics of business innovation" -- the proposition that an innovation in management practices will occur as a result of the capabilities offered by modern business applications, pervasive communications networks, and exponentially growing digital traces of the millions of events that take place every day in 21st-century society.

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Achieving Measurable Value: Using EV+2 to Evaluate IT Investments (Vol. 8, No. 9)

Either willingly or begrudgingly, many IT organizations have come to realize that they must assess IT investments in the quest for good governance and value management. Together, all the activities and decision making that focus specifically on deriving value from IT investment are called the Value Assurance Lifecycle (VAL). This Executive Report by John Berry explores VAL and how the new methodology EV+2 drives superior organizational management performance in reaching value goals from IT.

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UK and European Central Government Risk Management and Communications (Vol. 8, No. 8)

Formal risk management systems adopted by the European public sector tend to be extremely formulaic. While not a bad thing in itself (they are repeatable, easily audited, can be made completely transparent, and are considerably better than nothing), there are multiple challenges. This Executive Report by Carole Edrich examines these challenges, particularly the communication of risk and the way its impact is assessed in the UK's central government, contrasting it to that of the rest of Europe when a significant difference exists. It then derives a set of recommendations from the lessons learned.

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Running IT Like a Business: Planning for Success (Vol. 8, No. 7)

Running IT like a business is one approach some companies are taking to solve long-standing problems and dissatisfaction with the internal IT organization. However, in order to do this successfully, companies need to perform the same analysis and planning that any new business would do before setting up shop. This Executive Report by Mark Bills discusses how to apply the principles of three strategic frameworks to this concept of running IT like a business within a business.

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Digital Gold: Managing Technology Due Diligence, Part II (Vol. 8, No. 6)

This Executive Report, the second in a two-part series that began last month, provides detailed descriptions of the 15 due diligence criteria introduced in Part I. The report also offers recommendations on how to organize and implement due diligence projects and defines the technology due diligence best practices.

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Digital Gold: Managing Technology Due Diligence, Part I (Vol. 8, No. 5)

This Executive Report, Part I of a two-part series by Steve Andriole, examines technology due diligence from the perspective of three participants: CIOs, venture capitalists, and technology vendors. Part I focuses on the range of technology investments and examines the expectations each of the three types of investors has regarding the investment outcome. It also offers an overview of 15 due diligence criteria that can be used by all parties to make a variety of technology assessment decisions; these criteria will be elaborated in Part II.

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Transforming Your Business Processes Effectively (Vol. 8, No. 4)

Many companies spend the majority of their time and effort improving business process efficiencies. This Executive Report by Dr. Tushar K. Hazra addresses the challenges for practitioners in pursuing business process transformation (BPX) initiatives today and presents a roadmap to prepare an organization for effective BPX.

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Back-End IT Strategic Planning: From Ranking Projects to the Ongoing Planning Process (Vol. 8, No. 3)

Much of the literature on IT project development focuses on ensuring that proposed IT projects support the business strategy, identify initiatives that pursue the IT vision, and complete an organization's applications portfolio. But what is to be done when the business's reach exceeds its grasp -- that is, when the organization has identified a greater number of opportunities than its resources can accommodate? This Executive Report by Kenneth Rau addresses how IT departments can prioritize projects and create a multiyear plan for project implementation.

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Connecting IT to Business Strategy: Part III -- Following Through to Plans and Budgets (Vol. 8, No. 2)

This Executive Report by Bob Benson, Tom Bugnitz, and Bill Walton is the third and final installment in a series that illustrates how applying the Strategy-to-Bottom-Line Value Chain can maximize a company's bottom line. In this report, the organization we've been following implements the value chain's final two management processes: the development of IT plans and budgets in response to strategic and operational requirements.

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Cultivating Effective Leadership in the IT World (Vol. 8, No. 1)

Leadership is critical to the success of all enterprises. Nowhere is this need more apparent than in the IT world. The best technologists are often promoted and then left without guidance to learn the leadership ropes on the job, resulting in demoralized teams, overbudget projects, and a lack of project direction. This Executive Report by David R. Caruso and Kerry F. Gentry argues that a more structured approach to leadership is both possible and necessary. The goal of this report is to define the nature of leadership, to propose a simple, universal model of leadership, and to suggest a methodical approach to the selection and training of effective leaders in IT.

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2004 | Volume 7
Quo Vadis IT? Structuring the IT Organization of the Future (Vol. 7, No. 12)

The convergence of shifting business attitudes about IT and the availability of new IT outsourcing options will cause fundamental changes to IT departments as we know them. This Executive Report by Helen Pukszta examines the role of the IT resource and of the IT function in business. It defines the generic business requirements for the new IT function and proposes a general IT organizational structure and IT governance framework, giving consideration to recent trends in outsourcing and IT portfolio management.

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Connecting IT to Business Strategy: Part II (Vol. 7, No. 11)

A company should spend money on IT only if those dollars directly support its business strategy. This relatively simple concept can be difficult to follow in the real world. The second portion of a three-part series, the following Executive Report by Bob Benson, Tom Bugnitz, and Bill Walton shows how organizations can achieve this goal by using the processes of the Strategy-to-Bottom-Line Value Chain.

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Shared Services: Developing a Positive Brand and Reputation for IT (Vol. 7, No. 10)

Moving to shared services ensures that IT functions can create a winning delivery model that lowers costs and improves service to the businesses they serve. Consolidating IT into a single organization enables the CIO to build a strong reputation and a positive brand as a business partner. This Executive Report by Barbara Quinn provides an overview of shared services, details the implementation steps, and examines how shared services intersects with business process outsourcing and how business-partner relationships are the key to the future of IT.

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The Value of Activity-Based Costing (Vol. 7, No. 9)

As a measure of the value an organization derives from IT, activity-based costing has come of age. This Executive Report by Kenneth Rau examines activity-based costing in the IT industry as well as more conventional approaches to analyzing IT spending to help you determine the right amount to spend and whether what you spend is spent on the right things. The report also shows how activity-based costing provides a common language for understanding and discussing IT spending throughout the organization.

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Connecting IT to Business Strategy: Part I (Vol. 7, No. 8)

Despite all the strategic thinking and budgeting in which businesses engage, several factors can prevent organizations from accomplishing their goals. In this Executive Report, the first in a two-part series by Bob Benson, Tom Bugnitz, and Bill Walton, learn how a company can reap the benefits of the Strategy-to-Bottom-Line Value Chain to align its IT investments with the goals of the business.

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The Case for Open Source (Vol. 7, No. 7)

There are many questions about the risks and benefits of adopting open source software. This Executive Report by Khaled El Emam discusses the costs, reliability, and security risks and makes recommendations on how you can proceed.

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Surviving the IT Trenches, Living the Dream (Vol. 7, No. 6)

Today's perpetually changing world of information technology is forcing business-technology leaders to change. New leadership obstacles are arising as businesses try to emerge from the technology upheaval of the 1990s and the belt-tightening strategies of the past few years. This Executive Report by Steve Andriole examines these challenges and provides a framework for leading IT in this decade.

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The Rise of Enterprise Risk Management and Governance (Vol. 7, No. 5)

For corporations, risk management has become a top-level concern in the face of increasing demand for greater corporate accountability as well as world events that have changed the risk landscape and their impact on the business world. This Executive Report by Robert N. Charette looks at the rapid rise in enterprise-wide assessment and management of risk and at the CIO's role in that effort.

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Extending Zachman: Enterprise Architecture and Strategic IT Planning (Vol. 7, No. 4)

Strategic planning for IT is the most important yet most difficult aspect of an IT executive's job. This Executive Report by Ken Orr explores how enterprise architecture, if viewed as similar to urban and transportation planning, can help CIOs and CTOs in large organizations become more successful in managing their IT asset bases.

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Why Information Security Matters (Vol. 7, No. 3)

Much like local economies, the global economy depends on trust. But in a world that is location-independent and data-rich, naive trust is not enough. Information security verifies, demarcates, and quantifies that trust. Information security matters, and it must be understood. This Executive Report by Daniel E. Geer helps provide that understanding.

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A Process-Based Approach to Business Cases (Vol. 7, No. 2)

IT spending may well be back in vogue, but that doesn't mean that new expenditures will not be closely scrutinized. This Executive Report by Mark Cotteleer introduces a process, applied at a tier-1 automotive supplier, for building business cases for complex projects while analyzing the impact of an investment on important aspects of an enterprise.

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Cultivating the IT Portfolio Manager (Vol. 7, No. 1)

If the IT organization of today is to shed its long-standing external image as an incomprehensible black hole, it can begin by adopting a portfolio management approach to the corporation's IT investments. This Executive Report by Ram Reddy shows how to accomplish such a task.

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2003 | Volume 6
Finding the IT Improvement Zone (Vol. 6, No. 12)

How can the IT organization deliver a bigger bang for the IT buck and at the same time control, and even reduce, the bucks needed to accomplish this? In this Executive Report, Bob Benson, Tom Bugnitz, and Bill Walton share their method for improving IT's bottom-line impact while reducing expenses, with the ultimate goal of reaching the IT Improvement Zone.

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Governance for the Early 21st Century (Vol. 6, No. 11)

As the corporation extends itself beyond its own functions and activities, governing it involves a creative approach, rooted in business-technology best practices. This Executive Report by Steve Andriole offers a new way to think about governance by providing a list of activities, which fall within five business-technology layers, and discussing how those activities can be applied to both centralized and decentralized organizations.

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The Making of the Agile IT Executive (Vol. 6, No. 10)

The ever-increasing speed of business requires that today's CIOs have a commanding knowledge of information with which they can make quick decisions. But how can they make these decisions? This Executive Report by Michael Mah shows how the use and command of metrics, along with modern practices of effective negotiation, can combine to create the agile IT executive.

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Aligning IT Delivery Options with Corporate Objectives (Vol. 6, No. 9)

Things used to be simple in the early days of computers. Need new functionality? Just do it yourself. Today, we have many choices, from buying and renting software to outsourcing services to third parties. But while this provides flexibility in addressing business requirements, it adds considerable selection and management challenges. Future IT organizations will be judged by their sourcing abilities; and this Executive Report by Ian Hayes offers IT organizations a four-step process for aligning their delivery options with corporate needs.

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Strategies for Organizational Effectiveness: Leveraging a Business-IT Framework (Vol. 6, No. 8)

In today's organizations, a good chunk of work is performed via teams and collaborative workgroups, particularly cross-disciplinary teams comprising IT professionals and end-user business units. But forging to become a high-performing team takes a lot of preliminary work from the organization as a whole. This Executive Report by Pam Hager focuses on key considerations that will turn your teams into the high-performing groups that everyone expects.

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Strategizing IT in a World of New Technologies (Vol. 6, No. 7)

Born in the consumer marketplace, a new generation of information technologies represents a new generation of tools -- built on existing technologies -- that can greatly influence enterprise computing. This Executive Report by Jesse Feiler addresses some of these emerging technologies and how organizations should integrate these technologies into new and existing IT strategies.

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Complying with HIPAA: The Impact on IT (Vol. 6, No. 6)

Seven years ago, US President Bill Clinton and the US Congress approved the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), primarily as a way of protecting the security and privacy of personal health information. But HIPAA also steers the attention of healthcare providers and insurers toward standardizing electronic transactions and simplifying the administration of healthcare. In this Executive Report, Dr. Tushar Hazra and Robert Pillar examine the impact of HIPAA on corporate IT, from the effects on enterprise architecture to working with business partners and aligning IT and business strategy.

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Today's Best Practices in Business Technology Management (Vol. 6, No. 5)

Amid the economic changes of the past few years, there have been significant shifts in the way organizations acquire, leverage, and support information technology. This Executive Report by Steve Andriole outlines today's best practices in managing IT, from measurement and reining in total cost of ownership to outsourcing and project management.

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Time to Get Real: Moving Toward the Real-Time Enterprise (Vol. 6, No. 4)

There is no shortage of reading material on the rise of the real-time enterprise. But it's time to look beyond the verbiage so that organizations can decide what they must do to become "real time." This Executive Report by Stowe Boyd inspects and dissects what's being said about the real-time enterprise and helps you chart a course for your organization. There are two key points to keep in mind: technology is king in real time, and organizations will need it in order to respond quickly to market changes.

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Architecture and Ambiguity in the Aligned Enterprise (Vol. 6, No. 3)

It has been typical for a company's IT and business units to have little in common. However, a recent Cutter Consortium survey finds good agreement between business goals and IT's support of them since 1998, when Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Steve Andriole introduced a methodology and framework to assess and revise the extent of alignment. But the overwhelming message from the results and subsequent interviews with many respondents suggests that while IT professionals substantially agree that their firms have achieved a harmonious relationship within the business units, some believe it can still improve.

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Open Source and the Cathedral (Vol. 6, No. 2)

Where does the debate on open source software (OSS) versus other commercial solutions stand today? In this Executive Report, author Brian J. Dooley examines the open source phenomenon and its place in the enterprise environment. He explores the following questions: "Is open source ready for the enterprise? Can open source and commercial software coexist? What are the benefits of using OSS? What is available for the enterprise? How do the overall costs of OSS compare with those of commercial solutions?" Catch up on this continuing debate to find out how your organization can best take advantage of the latest models in software development, distribution, and pricing.

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Business Continuity Planning (Vol. 6, No. 1)

In a world amidst an era of terrorism, where does your company's disaster recovery plan stand today? According to author Dave Higgins, "Despite the obvious attention focused on the need for robust business continuity plans by the September 11 attacks, many organizations haven't followed through with the vigorous business continuity planning (BCP) efforts that were widely predicted." In this Executive Report, Higgins presents a four-phase business continuity plan that includes broader topics like disaster mitigation and business resumption planning. Learn how BCP can increase the value of your organization by reducing its exposure to risk and by increasing confidence that the organization can survive unforeseen events.

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2002 | Volume 5
Getting the Most Out of Your IT Application and Project Investments (Vol. 5, No. 12)

Today, how can companies get more for less and boost the overall return on investment for IT portfolios? According to author Ian Hayes, "IT managers are seeking to increase business value by actively managing their applications and project portfolios. Borrowing techniques from professional securities investors, IT organizations can proactively manage and balance their portfolios." This Executive Report examines how IT organizations can manage application and project portfolios. Hayes presents practical guidelines and outlines steps for companies to take toward achieving the highest payback on IT investments, balancing risk, and reducing costs.

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Systems Minus Systems Thinking Equals Big Trouble (Vol. 5, No. 11)

Quality, cost, and time for delivery are classic problems for the software industry. According to authors Thomas Marzolf and Michael Guttman, "These are symptoms of underlying problems of waste and inefficiency caused by unmanaged complexity, duplicate effort, and redundant definitions. The root cause of all of these problems is the lack of a holistic approach to systems." In this Executive Report, Marzolf and Guttman apply systems thinking (ST) to software development and describe the concepts and tools that enable this systems worldview to solve problems accepted as "insolvable." Examples of how systems can be modeled using ST are also provided.

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Instant Messaging Goes Corporate (Vol. 5, No. 10)

"We are already beyond the inflection point for corporate instant messaging, which has become a global phenomenon, reaching across all industries and business functions. The challenge before us is to harness and exploit this communication breakthrough," states author and Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Stowe Boyd. How should companies proceed when it concerns instant messaging (IM)? Find out as Boyd provides an overview of the state of the industry, presents data on what companies are doing today, and shows where IM is heading in the future. Is your company adequately prepared?

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Managing Technology Decisionmaking (Vol. 5, No. 9)

IT managers need to look at innovation research -- specifically, the area called the diffusion of innovation -- as a major tool in their management toolkit. Around the world, chief information and technology officers are making decisions for IT investments that will set the direction for IT in the future. To help make these decisions, in this Executive Report, Cutter Business Technology Council Fellow Ken Orr proposes several frameworks for managers to help them make better decisions and explains how they can make IT decisions work.

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Strategy and Portfolio Management of IT Assets: IT Imperatives for Success Today (Vol. 5, No. 8)

How do companies successfully strategize now for the future? This Executive Report by Pam Hager addresses how to survive and excel in a constantly changing business environment and presents a means to success through strategy development and portfolio management of IT assets. This report provides companies with processes to follow, techniques to support these processes, and a list of obstacles to avoid.

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Commercializing Corporate IT Software Assets (Vol. 5, No. 7)

There is an emerging market for the vast majority of corporate IT software assets and intellectual property, which are currently underutilized, assert authors Guttman, Lo Giudice, and Ohnjec. This report provides a description of the emerging market for commercialization and a general framework for thinking about this new opportunity. It provides specific information about how to prepare software assets for commercialization, and gives pointers to potential sources of help, information, and partnering. Topics covered include how to inventory software assets, identify candidate assets, research the market, and structure licenses and agreements.

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Rethinking the IT Function: The Future of Enterprise Applications (Vol. 5, No. 6)

Author, Ram Reddy examines the IT function and sheds light on the root causes of frustration for the IT and non-IT functions within a company as new technologies are introduced to existing systems. Reddy states, "the frustrations with the IT function is the result of a deeper conflict: the divergent goals of developing core competencies and innovation." The report outlines ways of resolving this dilemma and proposes solutions. For Reddy, "The problem for IT is keeping these innovations from disrupting the operations of the high-volume enterprise systems needed to keep today's business running. The answer can be learned from new product development -- isolate or reorient the innovation." To achieve success with a new product or service, it is critical for this innovation to have its own set of core capabilities.

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New Opportunities for Business-Technology Integration (Vol. 5, No. 5)

This report is about technology optimization through a new relationship between business and technology. Author, Steve Andriole writes, "We're at a flashpoint: the pace of technology deployment and business velocity has already outstripped our ability to assess its impact on how we live, produce and distribute. It's now time to think about where all this is going - and how to optimize it." Andriole argues that a rational approach for businesses must be multidisciplinary, adaptive, cautious and evidence-based. According to Andriole, "It's about cost-effectiveness, return-on-investment and about unlocking technology's potential to improve your business."

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Web Services: The Promise for the Future (Vol. 5, No. 4)

Author, Clive Finkelstein, thoroughly explains web services in this report. He introduces the concepts and reasons for the rapid growth of Web services for the corporate intranet, extranets, and the Internet. This is followed by a detailed technical discussion, with some typical examples and applications. The report concludes with a discussion of tools and products from the vendors supporting this growing field.

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Pervasive Computing: Trends You Need to Track, Things You Need to Do (Vol. 5, No. 3)

This executive report is about how companies need to identify the trends in the technologies which are likely to underwrite the next major computing era, pervasive computing. Author Steve Andriole provides a Pervasive Computing Checklist to jump start a company's trends analyses, and to help companies prepare for the Pervasive Computing era. Andriole states, "The purpose of trends tracking and Q&A is to develop lists of technologies likely to have the most impact on your business."

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Clicks and Mortar Internet Strategies: Making Them Work (Vol. 5, No. 2)

According to the author, Glenn Yeffeth, clicks and mortar strategies provide the most powerful approach to realizing value for businesses. In this executive report, he presents an overview of the origins of clicks and mortar strategies, and presents two case studies: Dell Computer, and Charles Schwab. In addition, Yeffeth discusses how to develop a unique, and successful clicks & mortar strategy.

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Developing An Enterprise-Wide Testing Strategy (Vol. 5, No. 1)

This report presents a case for an enterprise-wide approach to IT testing. The authors, Martyn Emery and David Evans, explain why testing strategies need to change, and how. They propose a structured approach to testing, called the Structured System Testing Methodology (SSTM), and follow it up by presenting ways of achieving successful implementation. The proposals made in the report are relevant to all organizations of significant size, whatever their industry orientation.

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2001 | Volume 4
The New IT Mindset (Vol. 4, No. 12)

The new IT mindset presented by author Helen Pukszta has three defining characteristics: IT knowledge is a requisite part of business competence. IT investments are business managers' responsibility. And IT and business are not separate concepts or domains. This report offers seven steps you can use to help your organization achieve this new mindset and gain maximum benefit from innovation, implementation, and integration.

Developing a Wireless IT Strategy (Vol. 4, No. 11)

To help IT organizations make critical decisions on wireless deployment, Frank Coyle describes how wireless can be applied across three major application areas, where it sits on the "hype cycle" of new technologies, and the risks and challenges involved in implementing wireless solutions -- and what can be done about them. He assesses emerging technologies such as 3G networks, wireless local area networks (WLANs), Bluetooth, and the Extensible Markup Language (XML).

Solving the Right Problems (Vol. 4, No. 10)

"In this day of information overload," write authors Howard Adams and Tammy Adams, "making decisions is even tougher. There's more data, less time, and more choices. How do we know what information is relevant to our decisions? How do we identify alternatives that will solve problems without creating new ones?" The Adamses show how putting some order into two of your critical daily decisionmaking activities -- framing and deciding how to decide -- will greatly improve the results you seek.

Collaboration: A Holistic Approach to Empowering Teams (Vol. 4, No. 9)

More and more, vendors and businesses are promoting collaboration, but collaboration is a word used to mean many things in business today. This report takes a hard look at collaboration. Ideas that have worked in the past and present, as well as noted failures from both, are used to develop a systemic model to use to build a collaboration strategy for any organization. Writes author Lou Russell, "Treated systemically, collaboration can bring great power and advantage to an organization. Treated as a technology initiative, collaboration can become just another term destined for the buzzword junkyard. The choice is yours."

Business and IT: A Gap Analysis (Vol. 4, No. 8)

Writes author Robert Benson, "Most companies today demonstrate a considerable gap between the goals of IT and those of the business -- and I believe the gap is growing. For example, the executive team of one of our clients hired us to solve its IT governance crisis. Another client is struggling because its business units are acting at cross purposes with its IT service units. A third client is focusing on finding a common IT direction among its business units, and a fourth frets about its failures to successfully find cross-silo business solutions (such as enterprise resource planning)." Benson's report details the growing gap between business and IT and offers practical ways to address it, including establishing IT's value proposition, prioritizing the application development portfolio, accessing total IT expenditures (against business goals), and instituting performance-based management.

Alignment Through Learning (Vol. 4, No. 7)

IT professionals are constantly feeling pressure to become better aligned with the business areas they support. Far too little time is spent explaining why alignment is important and how to go about becoming better aligned. This report aims to fill these voids and give IT professionals practical advice for seeking and attaining alignment with the business of their company. Writes author Ian Hayes, "For IT, survival clearly means shedding commodity skills and moving up the value chain. To punch through the glass ceiling, IT must become more business-focused and take a larger role in originating and implementing strategic, value-adding ideas. Moving up the value chain gives IT the ability to make a greater contribution to the success of the business, brings better recognition and pay, and allows IT to better predict and prepare for trends before they affect the company. A prerequisite to moving up the value chain is having a broad base of business knowledge."

Measuring Business-IT Alignment (Vol. 4, No. 6)

This report contends that measuring business-IT alignment involves a multidimensional set of disciplines applied to various business units and IT functions within and beyond the enterprise. This includes analyzing how well supply- and distribution-related activities are aligned from an information management perspective. Writes author William Ulrich, "Aligning IT with critical business initiatives is an elusive challenge for organizations riding the wave of industry changes, globalization, and emerging technologies. Customers, suppliers, distributors, and competitors are continuously pushing organizations to deliver higher quality goods and services in less time. Information management, synchronized with core business principles, is central to meeting these challenges. Because change is a constant, business-IT alignment is an ideal rather than a goal that can be fully achieved. Corporations should therefore seek a degree of alignment that pushes them toward this ideal. A business-IT alignment measurement program acts as a barometer, indicating whether your enterprise is moving toward alignment or away from it."

Formulating and Implementing a Customer-Centric Strategy (Vol. 4, No. 5)

This report discusses the reasons for the high failure rates of customer relationship management (CRM) system implementations. It also recommends an approach to developing and implementing a customer-focused strategy that increases the chances of success. Lack of an actionable customer-centric strategy that is aligned with overall corporate objectives is identified as a major culprit in CRM program failures. Writes author Ram Reddy, "In the turbulent environment caused by the e-business revolution, some so-called experts claimed that strategy was no longer required; all a company had to do was use CRM technology to constantly delight customers with highly customized products and services. Instead, business strategy has evolved from multiyear plans stored in three-ring binders to actionable statements that everyone across the firm can understand, implement, and support in their daily activities."

Surviving Enterprise Systems: Adaptive Strategies for Managing Your Largest IT Investments (Vol. 4, No. 4)

In this executive report, author Robert Austin discusses the problems associated with implementing large enterprise systems such as those designed for ERP or CRM. Austin suggests that these huge IT projects are actually more like new ventures than large capital projects in terms of their risk profiles, and that techniques for managing them might reasonably be drawn from the playbooks of shrewd venture capitalists (VCs). Writes Austin, "This is the basic challenge of enterprise systems, that their profile as investments makes for a lousy business proposition. They are the worst kind of investment: large, front-loaded, and very risky." Austin goes on to describe the characteristics of successful enterprise system implementation projects, giving case study examples from Cisco and Tektronix to reveal how each company exhibited these characteristics in very different ways.

Creating and Implementing a Security Strategy (Vol. 4, No. 3)

The report offers corrections to popular IT security myths and describes a detailed security strategy composed of four steps: planning, assessment, implementation, and response. Writes author Charles Pfleeger, "The question is not if, but when. Don't question if you will need a computer security strategy; determine when the situation will arise showing you need one. Hackers, criminals, naive users, accidents, tired employees, acts of nature -- all of these can cause serious damage to IT systems and data. Failing to address security can lead to unnecessary risk and expense."

Business-Driven IT Integration and Realignment (Vol. 4, No. 2)

In this Executive Report, author William Ulrich describes how mergers, acquisitions, politics, competition, and personal agendas naturally shift institutions toward a fragmented, less integrated state. Writes Ulrich, "To address these tendencies, corporations must deploy strategies that institute integration as a binding principle across business units, IT, and third parties. This does not mean that every overlapping or redundant business unit, process, data structure, and system needs to be rationalized down to a single occurrence. It means that management should establish a level of cohesiveness where these redundancies are recognized and accommodated through collaborative solutions that collectively move the enterprise toward fulfillment of its prime purpose."

IT's Role in Transitioning to E-Business (Vol. 4, No. 1)

Writes author Geoff Dober, "A comprehensive e-business strategy is now more important than ever. The organization's IT systems that are based on an old business model (legacy) are the fabric on which the corporation has depended for its success. This alone suggests that IT is faced with a complex transition that will probably affect every system in the portfolio." The report advocates that the exercise of creating an e-business strategy should not be approached as an interim, cost minimization activity. "This is a transformation, not an upgrade," says Dober. The actual investment will depend on the nature and size of the business, its current state of maturity in the e-business world, and the degree of integration of its systems and processes. Budgeting and project prioritization demand a careful, thorough analysis of these issues so that the inevitable capital planning and allocation is carried out based on a sound understanding of all that is involved.

2000 | Volume 3
Mitigating Business Risk Through Software Capability Improvement (Vol. 3, No. 12)

Says author Colin Tully, "The prevailing mindset in the software industry is an acceptance that low capability, and subsequent high rates and costs of failure, are as inevitable as night and day. For the most part, there is ignorance that high capability is possible and many do not even know what it means. There is good empirical evidence, however, of what can be achieved by designing high capability into software production systems." The report proposes a new capability framework. It identifies four capability drivers (people, process, technology, and organizational culture); five capability factors (productivity, quality, management, versatility, and business value); and, from a detailed analysis of the factors, 30 capability indicators. This framework can be used as the basis of a method for measuring capability and setting improvement targets in a far more detailed way than is allowed by CMM. Finally, a simple outline of such a method is proposed.

Developing and Implementing a Core Competence-Based Strategy (Vol. 3, No. 11)

Says author Ian Hayes, "By playing to their strengths and focusing on their core competencies, IT organizations can provide many benefits to their parent companies. At the IT level, however, there is generally much less proactive, formal development of competence strategies compared to the business level. If IT truly wants to align itself with the company's objectives, it must confront the issue of its core competencies."

Software Critical Chain Project Management: Do Silver Bullets Exist for Schedule Reduction? (Vol. 3, No. 10)

This report discusses a new type of project management, one that views projects as system, rather than individually. Says author Richard Zultner, "Software organizations are implementing software critical chain project management to substantially reduce the elapsed time of their projects without adding resources (or increasing overtime), narrowing the project scope, increasing risk, or cutting quality of the delivered system. As a by-product, late projects are virtually eliminated."

The New Risk Management (Vol. 3, No. 9)

Writes author Bob Charette, "Over the past decade and a half, there has been a marked shift in the nature and level of risk that organizations must deal with. Today, it's an organization's ability to understand and manage its full spectrum of risk that defines the boundary between success and failure. Whereas risk against reward could be traded in a relatively straightforward financial fashion from the 1960s to the early 1980s, today this is no longer true. Massive technological, business, and societal changes have occurred that have changed the fundamental business risk-reward equations. Today's operating environment is filled with more diverse kinds of risk than ever before, risks that no one has much -- if any -- experience in managing, individually or collectively."

Knowledge Management: Exploiting Your Greatest Resource (Vol. 3, No. 8)

Organizations know that to remain competitive in the knowledge age, they must efficiently and effectively create, locate, capture, and share their organization's knowledge and expertise, applying this insight to problems and opportunities to create wealth. Whereas knowledge management was once only talked about on the lecture circuit and in front of university students, it has now made it onto the radar screens of Fortune 500 CEOs. Firms are not only showing a tremendous interest in implementing knowledge management processes and technologies, they are beginning to weave knowledge management into their overall business strategy.

This report outlines the current state of the knowledge management industry from the perspectives of those who live and breath knowledge management day in and day out. Knowledge management has become more familiar over the past few years as businesspeople have become involved with their own knowledge management projects, read the leading business texts, or attended conferences dedicated to knowledge management. But as a community of practice, we seem in need of a collective understanding of what comprises the constituent and systemic dimensions of knowledge management and how those dimensions organize in a context of business management.

The New IT Organization (Vol. 3, No. 7)

Says author William Ulrich, "The old organizational chart no longer reflects the way things really work, and nowhere is this more apparent than inside the world of information management." This report contains a suggested approach for reinventing the information management function so that it can more effectively interface, integrate, and collaborate with internal and external business entities, leverage historic IT disciplines, and adapt to today's increasingly dynamic business environment.

Business Modeling: The Road To Business-IT Alignment (Vol. 3, No. 6)

Turning the alignment concept into practice is not an easy task. Business modeling plays a key role in this process -- it is essential for organizations to learn how to practice this managerial activity. This month's Executive Report , written by Alexandre G. Rodrigues, explores the reasons why, and proposes a business-IT modeling framework, based on the use of a simulation modeling technique called System Dynamics (SD).

Business-IT Strategies Executive Report Abstracts