This Update describes how to maintain traceability between business-level SOA specifications and implementation artifacts.

Taking advantage of social media insight requires integrating and analyzing social media in conjunction with enterprise data and correlating the findings. This Executive Report examines how social media analytics, when combined with traditional business analytics, can provide rich insights organizations can apply to a range of BI, CRM, marketing, product development, and other data analysis and performance management efforts.

Taking advantage of social media insight requires integrating and analyzing social media in conjunction with enterprise data and correlating the findings. This Executive Report examines how social media analytics, when combined with traditional business analytics, can provide rich insights organizations can apply to a range of BI, CRM, marketing, product development, and other data analysis and performance management efforts.

In an Agile world, we often talk about the importance of involving the client (or key stakeholders) throughout the development cycle. My work experience mainly allowed me to work with two types of clients: internal clients (as part of the IT department in the mid-to-late 1990s) and with product management teams (from 2000 to 2010).

EA is an information and knowledge management discipline. By gathering information about the architecture, its components, and its domains, we come to understand the architectural landscape, and it is through information that we communicate our plans to change and evolve the architecture.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is about more than just sensors and a lot of data and analytics (although these certainly are key components); it also involves the application of new technologies and practices like mobile devices, collaboration, and smart networks that are literally changing how businesses operate and people work. Lately, I've been examining how such technologies are having an impact in manufacturing, engineering, and other industrial environments.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is about more than just sensors and a lot of data and analytics (although these certainly are key components); it also involves the application of new technologies and practices like mobile devices, collaboration, and smart networks that are literally changing how businesses operate and people work. Lately, I've been examining how such technologies are having an impact in manufacturing, engineering, and other industrial environments.

The issue in negotiations is not about how we deal with senior executives or lawyers, accountants, or technical people. It is about how we deal with competitors, avoiders, compromisers, and so on. And there are many tricks and traps with each one. In this Executive Update, Dr. Sara Cullen looks at five styles that can affect negotiations more than expertise or seniority do.

At its core, leadership is an emotional process. To lead others, you must first develop self-awareness regarding your own emotional responses to situations and then the self-management skills to control those emotional responses in real time. After that, sharpen your senses so you can understand and manage the emotional responses of your followers. In order to strengthen people's ability to lead, help them develop greater capacity to understand and manage their own emotions, and then to understand and manage the emotional responses of those around them.

In the early 2000s, I ran a software company called Gray Hill Solutions that specialized in software-for-hire for the government sector, specifically in transportation management and traveler information. Among other projects, we built the original 511.org site for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area. We specialized in rescuing government projects that had spent most of their budget and their time, yet had little to show for the effort.

The bottom line is that we should expect enterprise mobility to continue to grow in importance, spreading to more areas of the enterprise. The main benefits organizations seek from adopting mobile technology are improved worker productivity, improved response to customer needs, and better collaboration and knowledge-sharing among employees.

This Executive Update explains how leading enterprise architecture teams create EA governance by having a stronger focus on architecture.

This year marks the centennial of the start of the First World War. One of the fiercest battles in WWI was the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium. This manslaughter took place from July-November 1917, with more than 500,000 men lost on both sides for only a few kilometers gained, which were retaken soon afterwards during the German Spring offensive.

Something that differentiates consumer devices from business and enterprise devices is the impact they have on the manner in which people live, their concerns, and how they occupy their time. The ability to immediately monitor a wide variety of characteristics and behaviors on an everyday basis and feed that back to a repository in the cloud inevitably creates an opportunity for control. This control may meet the objectives of the consumer, or it may be targeted to meet the objectives of a vendor. The opportunity for control is likely to become more significant as the IoT develops. Aspects of behavior become a part of a conversation.

Something that differentiates consumer devices from business and enterprise devices is the impact they have on the manner in which people live, their concerns, and how they occupy their time. The ability to immediately monitor a wide variety of characteristics and behaviors on an everyday basis and feed that back to a repository in the cloud inevitably creates an opportunity for control. This control may meet the objectives of the consumer, or it may be targeted to meet the objectives of a vendor. The opportunity for control is likely to become more significant as the IoT develops. Aspects of behavior become a part of a conversation.

Many businesses are still adjusting legacy security policies to embrace the rapid explosion of services purchased from other providers, rather than building inhouse. Chief information security officers (CISOs) and CIOs may long for the simpler times, but now they must assess the impact of the Internet of Things (IoT). What are the new threat surfaces the "things" will introduce to the business environment and what countermeasures could be considered? Can security policies even be enforced, economically, with the available security controls?

Within minutes after the New York Mets -- a baseball team that was legendary for its haplessness -- clinched the World Series on 17 October 1969 against the favored Baltimore Orioles, a spontaneous and wild ticker-tape celebration erupted across New York City's financial district.

In the early days of Agile software development, some believed incorrectly that Agile was the rejection of disciplined software development. A better perspective is that Agile was a rejection of techniques such as the waterfall lifecycle that are ill-suited to the dynamics of software.

Companies across many industries face pressures from disruptive companies using technology in entirely new ways to saturate the market. Progressive companies tasked with this challenge realize the benefits inherent to enterprise architecture (EA) or capability-based planning. EA is reemerging as a practice that allows business and technology to respond to major transformation in an orchestrated way, paving the way for the CIO to approach technology enablement with a new mindset.

As you probably know, Kanban boards, whether physical or online, are used as a tool for supporting Kanban. The success of Kanban has led to the creation of several excellent implementations of online Kanban boards. With such easy availability of these well-crafted tools, can we put them to other uses? As we explore in this Executive Update, if we step back and look at Kanban boards merely as information management tools, we find some very useful patterns of use. Let's dive in.

This Executive Update reveals that selected organizational and project factors encourage the use of Agile methods, while others discourage their use. While an understanding of adopting and using Agile approaches is emerging, more research -- preferably based on empirical data from real projects -- is needed to give better directions.

As we explore in this Executive Update, changes in processes and markets mean that businesses should reorganize to meet new demands for agility and access to special skills. This has led to increasingly modular-, workgroup-, and project-oriented organizations. We see this strongly within the IT industry, but it is becoming more common in other areas as increasing digitization brings larger amounts of work within range of digital manipulation and sharing.

I've been spending a lot of time with social media analytics and exploring how organizations are adopting and applying the technology. There are a number of obstacles confronting organizations seeking to implement social media analytics. These include technical and organizational considerations, as well as dealing with societal or consumer concerns when it comes to privacy. The latter appear to be particularly troublesome for end-user organizations.

I've been spending a lot of time with social media analytics and exploring how organizations are adopting and applying the technology. There are a number of obstacles confronting organizations seeking to implement social media analytics. These include technical and organizational considerations, as well as dealing with societal or consumer concerns when it comes to privacy. The latter appear to be particularly troublesome for end-user organizations.

So says Dumbledore in J.K. Rowling's book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, commenting on a mirror that shows us what our most desperate desires want us to see.