The collaborative nature of Agile projects has exposed participants to opportunities to experience a number of ingredients associated with group coherence (GC) in the research literature. We call these "Agile embedded ingredients," as they surface in Agile work. We present four here and discuss both their Agile appearance and the research about them. They are: (1) the commonly shared goal, (2) shared leadership, (3) trust and respect, and (4) practice.

In my last Advisor (see "Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas"), I introduced some of the ideas presented by EA Conference Chair Chris Potts in his keynote at the IRM Enterprise Architecture Conference, "High Im

Many projects concentrate their efforts on implementing technology used to support the business needs (replace System X with System Y) or deliver new functionality. In meetings, the topic of conversation is usually about which application to purchase and which vendor to choose. Those are important issues, but equally important considerations are how your company will use the information to conduct business, the readiness of existing data, and how you can adapt the data to fulfill the requirements of the new system.

Enterprises and large projects increasingly express interest in using Agile methods due to its success in small teams. In this Executive Report, we discuss expanding Agile for the enterprise through techniques for scaling, extending, and embracing Agile methodologies. Through the "discovery curve" technique, we show that discovering needed knowledge constitutes the largest obstacle any project team faces. Agile shortens discovery times in small teams.

Small Agile teams have attained a reputation for delivering continuous customer value using the Agile Manifesto and its principles with Agile mentors and literature as a guide. The success of these teams has whetted the appetite of both large corporations and large project teams to adopt Agile in hopes of achieving these results in a larger context.

In early June, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a remarkable report entitled, "Greece: Ex Post Evaluation of Exceptional Access Under the 2010 Stand-By Arrangement," documenting the IMF's decision to participate in the economic rescue of Greece from its self-created ec

In early June, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a remarkable report entitled, "Greece: Ex Post Evaluation of Exceptional Access Under the 2010 Stand-By Arrangement," documenting the IMF's decision to participate in the economic rescue of Greece from its self-created ec

Architecture debt refers to the cost and effort of dealing with the backlog of maintenance and change to legacy architectures that are necessary to bring the architectural landscape up to date.

As we continue to redefine and reorient data center toward virtualized cloud architectures on commodity servers, we will begin to see further development of the cloud concept and greater accommodation of hardware catering to special purposes.

As we continue to redefine and reorient data center toward virtualized cloud architectures on commodity servers, we will begin to see further development of the cloud concept and greater accommodation of hardware catering to special purposes.

It is time to turn our thinking about IT development's role in change on its head. Instead of IT being the driver and necessary means for change, it should be relegated to last in the order of things. The first step is study, which changes management's perception of the problem(s). The second step is to improve the service design so that it works for customers. The third and final step is to pull in IT development to provide the means to run the service in the new way.

Here, we examine techniques used by EA teams to support fifth-generation EA.

One of the more interesting acquisitions affecting the enterprise software, BI, and data management industry so far this year involves networking giant Cisco, which purchased data virtualization1 vendor Composite Software for approximately US $180 million in cash.

I don't know about you, but I've begun to notice a pattern in the problems that we have in keeping our secrets lately. Three years ago, a US Army enlisted man stationed in Iraq downloaded 250,000 US State Department cables and then handed them over to WikiLeaks which in turn handed them over to the press.

"The Agile and Lean movements clearly have a lot of life left in them. My expectation is that we’ll spend the next decade or more adopting disciplined Agile strategies to enable us to solve more complex problems and make possible a truly Agile enterprise."

-- Scott W. Ambler, Guest Editor

Circa 1990 (memo from the quality head): The lead assessor will be visiting our organization to check the maturity level this week. Please ensure documents are checked into the repository and folders named as per the standards. We need to get CMM Level 5 this year.

Circa 2010 (memo from Agile group lead): Please ensure every one completes the Agile maturity assessment as we need to understand the maturity levels of our teams.

Aldous Huxley, author of the classic novel Brave New World, once said, "There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception."

Last week I attended the IRM Enterprise Architecture Conference in London. This is the third year the conference has coincided with the BPM Conference, and the combination really seems to be working.

Humans have always exploited data to achieve social, cultural, and technological advances. In this digitized world, there is an obvious need to harness and manage this data more efficiently and effectively. In this Executive Update, we discuss cloud computing, Big Data, the Internet of Things (specifically, mobile applications), and analytics, as well as recent revolutionary developments occurring as a result of the amalgamation of these four technologies.

There is no question that we are becoming more visually oriented in our approach to thinking today. You can see it in the increasing numbers of PowerPoint presentations given with the admonition that fewer words will suffice.