This week, we're taking a look back at five of the most intriguing articles published in Cutter's Enterprise Risk Management & Governance practice over this past year. As you might imagine, it was no small task to cull the list and pare it down to just five articles.

"Nobody should ever see sausage or laws being made."

-- Mark Twain

"Nobody should ever see sausage or laws being made."

-- Mark Twain

As one year ends and another begins, many organizations focus on the annual end-of-year bonuses for their personnel. It's a time when managers may find themselves doing more harm than good as they dip into the well of opportunity and come up dry. What constitutes the best rewards for our staff and team members?

An old boss of mine used to say, "If you don't want your worst enemy to read it, don't write it down." I've thought of that quote often over the last week or so as the WikiLeaks fiasco has played out. A great deal of what has been leaked is venal, but not really secret.

This week, we're taking a look back at five of the most intriguing articles published in Cutter's Sourcing & Vendor Relationships practice over this past year. As you might imagine, it was no small task to cull the list and pare it down to just five articles. Look for these lists from each of our nine practice areas for a compilation of Cutter's 45 most intriguing articles of the year.

This week, we're taking a look back at five of the most intriguing articles published in Cutter's Sourcing & Vendor Relationships practice over this past year. As you might imagine, it was no small task to cull the list and pare it down to just five articles. Look for these lists from each of our nine practice areas for a compilation of Cutter's 45 most intriguing articles of the year.

As the New Year approaches, I thought I'd offer some predictions and recommendations on the key BI and data warehousing developments and practices organizations should focus on. In general, 2011 looks to be a great year for BI and data warehousing.

As the New Year approaches, I thought I'd offer some predictions and recommendations on the key BI and data warehousing developments and practices organizations should focus on. In general, 2011 looks to be a great year for BI and data warehousing.

In a previous Executive Report, 1 I argued that the terms of distribution that define a product as "open source" (the freedom to access, study, enhance, and redistribute the source code) have several important implications for organizations.

In the late 1990s, every newcomer in the search-engine space seemed to have every feature of its predecessor and more. Each was trying to win the home-page war in an arms race of feature one-upmanship. The more complicated search engines became, the less they seemed to be solving the real problem.1

Then, in 1998, a new upstart from Stanford University came along. It was focused on solving the original problem; quickly finding the most relevant information in the growing ocean of Web content. As we all know, Google changed the game forever.

Imagine, if you will, that all owners of data centers and agents representing buyers of computing cycles get together daily and buy and sell commodity computing units (we'll call them containers) in an open exchange.

This is the second in a series of Executive Updates that examines enterprise architecture (EA). Part I addressed questions about the practices of EA organizations.1 This Update focuses on the perceived effectiveness of EA.

Effective demand management is much less a matter of shiny new business analysis tools and techniques as applying existing ones in a way that allows us to "get a grip" -- to examine demand for IT in a critical yet innovative way while balancing it with an organization's capability for meeting that demand. The question, "How applicable is demand management to an agile world?" was one that I kept finding myself faced with.

Event analysis is a counterintuitive but "easy to understand and use" approach for designing or redesigning processes and systems. If used consistently and extensively, it simplifies architectures, increases structural parallelism, identifies needed controls, and expedites the eventual enhancements of applications, middleware, and operating systems.

On the shared services panel at the 2010 Cutter Summit , I turned out to be a minority of one in saying that central and local IT departments can, and should, exist in harmony.

On the shared services panel at the 2010 Cutter Summit , I turned out to be a minority of one in saying that central and local IT departments can, and should, exist in harmony.

Depending on whom you listen to, cloud computing is either the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's what the vendor has always been doing anyway, or it's an unprecedented threat to the integrity of your operations. Making sourcing decisions based on these messages is not only difficult, it is dangerous.

Depending on whom you listen to, cloud computing is either the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's what the vendor has always been doing anyway, or it's an unprecedented threat to the integrity of your operations. Making sourcing decisions based on these messages is not only difficult, it is dangerous.

Two important benefits afforded by data warehousing and BI are that they enable the distribution of standardized business information and standardized measures across the various parts of the organization.

Data integration solutions that perform well, especially on "big data," evolve from good design. These solutions exhibit one or more of the following characteristics: high level of parallelism, maximized bulk operations, reduced network data overhead, and an optimized/ nonduplicated transformation layer. While these considerations look straightforward, unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. A design solution is context-specific and is often a combination of the above characteristics.

In 2002, Harvard Business Review republished what it described as one of its best articles. Originally published in 1988, the piece outlined how to "get innovative," and in it Harvard Business School Professor Andrall E. Pearson proposed what he called "tough-minded ways" for companies to build an innovative organization.1

Change is happening fast. While many of us thought that cloud computing would take longer to become established than it has, that virtualization would virtualize at its own pace, and that strategic sourcing would stay tactical before it became strategic (in a decade or so), we're finding now that IT is moving at an unprecedented pace.

Change is happening fast. While many of us thought that cloud computing would take longer to become established than it has, that virtualization would virtualize at its own pace, and that strategic sourcing would stay tactical before it became strategic (in a decade or so), we're finding now that IT is moving at an unprecedented pace.

I recently worked on Kanban adoption with a new customer, who informed me that Kanban was already underway and wanted me to help finish the adoption.