While frameworks are generally seen as a necessary theoretical backbone for architecture, they are often perceived as being too abstract, with little direct relevance in the architect's daily routine. But for experienced enterprise architects, frameworks are a constant guide, used to direct and manage everything they do. Why, then, is such a useful architectural tool so frequently overlooked or underused?

Readers are probably familiar with the concept of a body of knowledge (BOK).

One of the topics in technology news these days is Big Data. So that raises a few questions. First, what do we mean by Big Data?

While frameworks are generally seen as a necessary theoretical backbone for architecture, they are often perceived as being too abstract, with little direct relevance in the architect's daily routine. But for experienced enterprise architects, frameworks are a constant guide, used to direct and manage everything they do.

Is the project manager expected to act as a negotiator, too? The answer: you better believe it! It may not be an "official" expectation, but a project manager who isn't prepared to face negotiation situations during the life of a project is not really prepared. The need for negotiation will happen -- trust me. And it will happen when you're not even aware it's happening.

It still amazes me how many enterprise data warehousing/business intelligence (DW/BI) projects struggle, often to the point of paralysis, with the "Inmon/Kimball" debate. This impasse revolves around whether a DW/BI program should insist upon routing all information through a complex, third normal form (3NF) data layer o

It still amazes me how many enterprise data warehousing/business intelligence (DW/BI) projects struggle, often to the point of paralysis, with the "Inmon/Kimball" debate. This impasse revolves around whether a DW/BI program should insist upon routing all information through a complex, third normal form (3NF) data layer o

I would like to follow up on a story mentioned in my previous Advisor ("Who Watches for the Watchers When the Watchers Don't Watch?" 12 January 2012).

I would like to follow up on a story mentioned in my previous Advisor ("Who Watches for the Watchers When the Watchers Don't Watch?" 12 January 2012).

In Part I of this Executive Update series, we looked at the barriers to and possible benefits of collaboration.

It is often attractive to executives to seek and apply so-called best practices when looking for ways to improve their performance. Despite purported track records of such practices as promoted by well-meaning expert thinkers, there lay hidden pitfalls that entrap many ope

In technology architecture, it's easy to spot a wrong solution but almost impossible to design the perfect system. The primary reason for this ever-changing nature of the solution is its evolution toward staying relevant to the changing business use case.

The general literature on leadership is very confusing. There are over 250 different definitions of leadership in the literature! Many of these definitions are not operational in that they don't provide guides to action. What specifically does a leader do? There is confusion over how leadership contrasts with the words "management" and "authority." Educational institutions like the Harvard Business School say their mission is to train leaders, but every professor has his or her own definition of leadership.

I started to see this trend play out last year, and this year I expect it to be more popular based on the advice I have been giving some of my vendor clients.

I started to see this trend play out last year, and this year I expect it to be more popular based on the advice I have been giving some of my vendor clients.

In technology architecture, it's easy to spot a wrong solution but almost impossible to design the perfect system.

Agile adoption for data warehouse and BI is on the rise. Agile can shorten development cycle time, improve quality, and help ensure that you build the right BI solutions for business decision makers. However, conventional IT organizational structures, policies, processes, and procedures are sometimes inconsistent with the tenets of agility. Values like customer collaboration, face-to-face interaction, and continuous delivery of value are often impeded by IT organizational protocols.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Susan Cain titled, "The Rise of the New Groupthink."1 It was a controversial article, and she took her lumps the next day in the "Letters" section. In the online comments, folks were more in agreement.

As we explore in this Executive Report, business resilience combines enterprise risk management (ERM) and agility to create robu

Business resilience has become increasingly important in the wake of an unusual period of natural disasters around the globe, and new technologies and organizational models have yielded improved capabilities to move forward in the face of any disaster. Threats, both natural and man-made, continue to proliferate, as all the possibilities of business, financial, and physical risk meet the evolving threat environment of increasingly pervasive IT.

Agile adoption for data warehouse and BI is on the rise. Agile can shorten development cycle time, improve quality, and help ensure that you build the right BI solutions for business decision makers.

When you hear that a business is "playing games," you probably think something shady is going on. But not necessarily! Video games can be extremely useful to virtually every organization. Businesses, not-for-profits, and governments are starting to use video games to address a wide range of business challenges.

Management guru Peter Drucker is famous for saying "You can't manage what you can't measure." From a different perspective and equally guru-like, W.

As I write this Executive Update, it is the season for annual performance appraisals. Managers and team members gather feedback, catalog accomplishments, and fill in forms. Managers collate, rate, and rank.

An important development bound to positively impact the use of the open source Apache Hadoop technology in the traditional enterprise is the introduction of packaged Big Data appliances from the enterprise hardware and software vendors. These offerings -- from Oracle, EMC Greenplum, Dell, and NetApp -- bundle Hadoop distributions along with database, storage connectors, and other software for integrating Hadoop applications with various data sources and into an organization's data center.