Training and awareness initiatives within organizations are like the dust bunnies hiding under your bed that you never want to think about. However, business leaders would be wise to realize that there is not a more effective information security and privacy defense than informed and aware personnel, as Part I of this three-part Executive Update series shows.

Many corporations and public-sector organizations are struggling with the increasingly rapid changes in the business and political environment. Market conditions, cost constraints, and technology implementations often bring stress to an IT organization. One of the most significant stress points is the lack of IT management's ability to effectively gain support for an enterprise architecture (EA) and provide a roadmap to generate asset value from IT investments.

Many corporations and public-sector organizations are struggling with the increasingly rapid changes in the business and political environment. Market conditions, cost constraints, and technology implementations often bring stress to an IT organization. One of the most significant stress points is the lack of IT management's ability to effectively gain support for an enterprise architecture (EA) and provide a roadmap to generate asset value from IT investments.

Which of the following is a worse problem?

The developers have started using agile practices, but managers are not on board.

A project manager institutes agile practices for his or her project, and only some of the developers and testers go along with it.

It has been a month since I wrote the first part of this Advisor in which I suggested that governments may need to understand the underlying sources of financial risk before they kick off yet another rescue plan (see "Before Moving to Another Rescue Plan, Review Your Risks," 6 November 2008).

It has been a month since I wrote the first part of this Advisor in which I suggested that governments may need to understand the underlying sources of financial risk before they kick off yet another rescue plan (see "Before Moving to Another Rescue Plan, Review Your Risks," 6 November 2008).

It has been a month since I wrote the first part of this Advisor in which I suggested that governments may need to understand the underlying sources of financial risk before they kick off yet another rescue plan (see "Before Moving to Another Rescue Plan, Review Your Risks," 6 November 2008).

Last month, Grafton County, New Hampshire (USA), Treasurer Carol Elliott lost her bid for a fourth term to Vanessa Sievers.

Last month, Grafton County, New Hampshire (USA), Treasurer Carol Elliott lost her bid for a fourth term to Vanessa Sievers.

IT has proven itself a catalyst for creating new ways to engage customers, build sales channel relationships, and sell products and services. Enabling new forms and methods of collaboration is where IT has shone quite conspicuously, as professionals are now equipped with the tools to meet, confer, and share ideas from across the hall or across the continent in real time.

IT has proven itself a catalyst for creating new ways to engage customers, build sales channel relationships, and sell products and services. Enabling new forms and methods of collaboration is where IT has shone quite conspicuously, as professionals are now equipped with the tools to meet, confer, and share ideas from across the hall or across the continent in real time.

Everyone has a perspective about return on investment (ROI). Lots of calculations, models, and algorithms allegedly precisely measure the impact of alternative technology investments. There is strategic ROI and tactical ROI; there is "soft" ROI and "hard" ROI. There are as many ROIs out there as there are RBIs in the major league. What do we make of the ROI smorgasbord?

Everyone has a perspective about return on investment (ROI). Lots of calculations, models, and algorithms allegedly precisely measure the impact of alternative technology investments. There is strategic ROI and tactical ROI; there is "soft" ROI and "hard" ROI. There are as many ROIs out there as there are RBIs in the major league. What do we make of the ROI smorgasbord?

In working with a client recently, we made the point that getting and keeping business involvement in any aspect of IT governance is a serious difficulty. We noted that this is true for every client with which we've worked over the last 25 years.

In this case, this understanding allowed us to lead this client to the following "three-phase" approach to successfully gaining management involvement, focusing on portfolio management for applications and infrastructure services as a start.

IT shops generate oodles and oodles of metrics. IT hardware and software can spit out hundreds of operational metrics, mostly to monitor system performance and diagnose system errors. On the hardware side, routers, switches, and data devices produce metrics that let operators infer the volume and kind of usage patterns at work.

Eight or nine years ago, I was working to design a state-of-the-art collaborative travel agent (CTA) system to help struggling travel agencies stem the loss of customers, especially their high-end business customers.

Organizations of all sizes across every industry are facing unprecedented business challenges that are forcing them to rethink how they operate. However, many IT and corporate decision makers are still hesitant to put aside traditional software and systems in order to more effectively perform day-to-day operations and improve their ability to achieve long-term objectives.

Organizations of all sizes across every industry are facing unprecedented business challenges that are forcing them to rethink how they operate. However, many IT and corporate decision makers are still hesitant to put aside traditional software and systems in order to more effectively perform day-to-day operations and improve their ability to achieve long-term objectives.

Organizations of all sizes across every industry are facing unprecedented business challenges that are forcing them to rethink how they operate. However, many IT and corporate decision makers are still hesitant to put aside traditional software and systems in order to more effectively perform day-to-day operations and improve their ability to achieve long-term objectives.

During the past year, high-performance analytic databases have received a fair amount of attention in the IT press.

The concept of knowledge management (KM) has been around for 25 years and is known to most business practitioners. KM, as practiced by competent enterprises and here, is defined as:

Each of the lessons, or "apparent truths," presented in this Executive Report by David Spann was discovered by one or more firms who actually went through an agile implementation process.

This Executive Report by Steve Andriole is the second in a series that describes the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and the impact they are having in the enterprise.

This Executive Report by Steve Andriole is the second in a series that describes the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and the impact they are having in the enterprise.

The accompanying Executive Report is the second in a series that describes the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and the impact they're having in the enterprise.