As most successful business managers will tell you, moving forward with the times is the only way to avoid falling behind them. The next big thing on the horizon all too quickly becomes the current big thing for which you need to have a strategic plan in place by the time it really rolls around.

This survey investigated organizations' use, development, and implementation of smartphone apps. Forty percent of the 79 respondents are from Asia/Australia/Pacific, 29% from North America, and 24% from Europe, with the remainder from Africa, the Middle East, and South America.

In my previous Advisor we described enterprise architecture (EA) and portfolio management (PM) ("Putting Enterprise Architecture and Portfolio Management Together, Part I").

SaaS is increasingly considered "enterprise grade" by many IT buyers and a viable choice in achieving reduced costs, improved service, and ongoing, timely functional currency.

SaaS is increasingly considered "enterprise grade" by many IT buyers and a viable choice in achieving reduced costs, improved service, and ongoing, timely functional currency.

The advent of Big Data has opened up enormous opportunities for retail enterprises to track and gain important insights about customers. Thriving customer analytics depends on the availability and credibility of the underlying data.

As every golfer knows, getting on the golf course early on Saturday morning doesn't improve your golf game by itself.

As an architect, I find that what architects do is not well understood, and we are frequently challenged to justify the value that we add to the enterprise. So I am always looking for opportunities to add value.

One important development expected to lead to greater use of Hadoop and MapReduce in the enterprise is the (ongoing) integration of the technologies with relational databases and SQL-based tools.

One important development expected to lead to greater use of Hadoop and MapReduce in the enterprise is the (ongoing) integration of the technologies with relational databases and SQL-based tools.

Cutter Business & Enterprise Architecture Practice Director Mike Rosen and I recently presented a one-day workshop on enterprise architecture (EA) and portfolio management (PM), and how they work together. Part of Mike's contribution was about technical debt and how it fits into both EA and PM. Planning the workshop created a new awareness of how important both EA and PM are and how, together, they can produce superior insight into delivering value to business and government organizations.

Cutter Business & Enterprise Architecture Practice Director Mike Rosen and I recently presented a one-day workshop on enterprise architecture (EA) and portfolio management (PM), and how they work together. Part of Mike's contribution was about technical debt and how it fits into both EA and PM.

I recently met with the Scrum rollout team of a new client -- an enterprise software F500 company. This inhouse rollout team has been "Scrumming" for a little over a year now. The team has already trained/coached about 40 Scrum teams.

Selecting tablets for enterprise computing currently comes down to three choices: the Apple iPad, Android-based devices from various vendors, and Research In Motion's BlackBerry Playbook.

Business intelligence is nothing new to the business and IT worlds, but it is hardly business as usual when it comes to leveraging BI in the growing field of social media-oriented business.

Business intelligence is nothing new to the business and IT worlds, but it is hardly business as usual when it comes to leveraging BI in the growing field of social media-oriented business.

Leadership is a phenomenon that is hard to describe or quantify. Like musical talent or athletic ability, leadership is innate -- some have it, some don't.

Neuroscience, particularly the science of the brain, is revolutionizing our understanding of what makes people tick -- a common and necessary preoccupation of managers. CIOs in particular have this burden because they have to provide services and resources to their organizations in a way that matches a peculiar expectation.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

-- Publilius Syrus

A recent search on Amazon.com using the keyword "team" yielded over 170,000 hits. Obviously, there is a lot of interest in and a lot being said about teams. And if you browse the titles of the books that are available, you will see that there are numerous perspectives on teams; for example, how to build team morale, how to develop high-performance teams, how to motivate teams, how to manage distributed teams, and so on.

Leadership is a phenomenon that is hard to describe or quantify. Like musical talent or athletic ability, leadership is innate -- some have it, some don't.

Neuroscience, particularly the science of the brain, is revolutionizing our understanding of what makes people tick -- a common and necessary preoccupation of managers. CIOs in particular have this burden because they have to provide services and resources to their organizations in a way that matches a peculiar expectation.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

-- Publilius Syrus

No one lacks an opinion on the subject of good leadership. Leadership seminars devote days to the discussion of theories, case studies, and war stories. Strategies and tactics that work in one setting, however, may fall flat in another. Theories alone don't promote a scientific approach to the identification and development of leaders. The path toward competent, high-performance leadership is not well marked.

This month's issue of Cutter IT Journal asks, "Is leadership a science?" Up front my answer is no -- leadership is an endeavor of passion. While we could discuss studies of cognitive science, decision science (analytical frameworks for decision making), neuropsychology, and the like, what we will be talking about here is one's interest in, passion for, and propensity for leading.