A "fuzzy" project is one where something feels out of sorts. Maybe the goal statement is a bit aggressive and you wonder whether or not it can be achieved. Maybe the proposed solution just doesn't seem to do the job. Or maybe the assumption of a cause-and-effect relationship between goal and solution is a bit of a stretch. Some managers would argue that all of their projects are fuzzy projects.

E-business

E-business

Everyone agrees that software agility is a good thing, and vendors have been the leading advocates.

In this Advisor, we'll consider some tactics for employing service-oriented architecture (SOA) techniques to improve your agile projects -- in other words, at service-orienting agile.

One of the major strengths of cloud computing is the freedom it gives companies to think strategically -- not tactically -- about how they want to leverage technology.

One of the major strengths of cloud computing is the freedom it gives companies to think strategically -- not tactically -- about how they want to leverage technology.

The intensely fractious healthcare debate should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone whose risks ultimately touch the personal lives of others. It has been a dramatic American experience as an entire nation has staked out positions either for or against the increased government role in individual healthcare and health insurance.

The intensely fractious healthcare debate should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone whose risks ultimately touch the personal lives of others. It has been a dramatic American experience as an entire nation has staked out positions either for or against the increased government role in individual healthcare and health insurance.

The intensely fractious healthcare debate should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone whose risks ultimately touch the personal lives of others. It has been a dramatic American experience as an entire nation has staked out positions either for or against the increased government role in individual healthcare and health insurance.

Service-oriented viewpoints are a way of gaining early measurable business value through reuse of existing services, including external cloud services as well as internal legacy services. Think of each viewpoint as a different pair of spectacles through which the analyst views the process.

Service-oriented viewpoints are a way of gaining early measurable business value through reuse of existing services, including external cloud services as well as internal legacy services. Think of each viewpoint as a different pair of spectacles through which the analyst views the process.

Complex event processing (CEP) generated a lot of hype in 2007 and 2008. By 2009, however, the hype has died down. With the recent "Community Technology Preview" release of Microsoft SQL Server StreamInsight, I expect the hype meter to begin revving up once again.

Businesses have been sourcing, and will continue to source, services from third parties located in distant countries to meet their organizational objectives of reduced cost, improved efficiencies, and higher quality of services. Yet the interconnectedness of enterprises increases operational complexity and adds to the burden on each entity to comply with strict privacy legislation and data-security requirements.

Businesses have been sourcing, and will continue to source, services from third parties located in distant countries to meet their organizational objectives of reduced cost, improved efficiencies, and higher quality of services. Yet the interconnectedness of enterprises increases operational complexity and adds to the burden on each entity to comply with strict privacy legislation and data-security requirements.

The recent announcement by BI vendor MicroStrategy, Inc., that its BI toolset (MicroStrategy 9) has been certified to run on the VMware virtualization platform has me thinking more about the possible benefits and issues of operating BI systems in virtualization environments.

Our industry benefited from a surge of IT capital spending in the years leading up to 2000 and has had little since then. That means the average company may now be running on an IT capital base that has been depreciated away to nothing or near nothing.

To make something new (a thing, a service, or an idea), you might adopt a goal: to make something new. We can call that an abstract goal: it’s perfectly particular, but allows for an infinite number of realizations. You can’t describe that goal in any detail, as you would an algorithm or a piece of music. The only way to describe it usefully is to repeat it.

To make something new (a thing, a service, or an idea), you might adopt a goal: to make something new. We can call that an abstract goal: it’s perfectly particular, but allows for an infinite number of realizations. You can’t describe that goal in any detail, as you would an algorithm or a piece of music. The only way to describe it usefully is to repeat it.

Recently, looking at scaling issues for a couple of multinational organizations, the issue of feature teams (customer-oriented) versus component teams (technically oriented) arose again. In an earlier Advisor (see "Feature vs.

"Information wants to be free, but organizations want to charge for it."

-- Cutter Fellow Tom DeMarco

"Information wants to be free, but organizations want to charge for it."

-- Cutter Fellow Tom DeMarco

Even today, capacity planning in IT proves difficult. Data storage requirements continue to grow dramatically. CPU demand keeps moving along briskly. Network consumption grows, too.

I suppose I ought to know better, and I do, but the marketing hype still never ceases to impress me. The latest victim: "the cloud." It is reported by our friends in the hype-cycle department that cloud computing is at the pinnacle of being overblown.

The majority of organizations using on-demand or cloud-based BI and data warehousing are basically satisfied with their solutions.