Last week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) complied with a US congressional request that the space agency release the findings from a four-year airline-safety study it conducted involving thousands of interviews -- including those with 24,000 pilots. The trouble is, NASA released the information in a format that makes it all but impossible to analyze further.

As more organizations face transitions to agile methods and those transitions involve larger segments of those organizations, the need for transition or transformation strategies increases.

If agile methods are to go mainstream, it might be when their popularity and legitimacy reach a tipping point.

As we begin 2008, I thought it would be useful to review a couple of stories from last year that might provide some added motivation for those of you resolving that this is the year you're going to get your organization to take enterprise risk management seriously.

As we begin 2008, I thought it would be useful to review a couple of stories from last year that might provide some added motivation for those of you resolving that this is the year you're going to get your organization to take enterprise risk management seriously.

I believe that traditional EA teams are set up to fail from the very beginning. Not on purpose, mind you, but more due to a lack of understanding of the realities of modern software development. The EA teams I've seen would often produce white papers and models that the developers would never read or, if they did read them, would soon forget.

The connection between IT investments and success with the customers who pay the firm money is often indirect, ambiguous, and difficult to establish.

In our last Advisor (see "The Nuts & Bolts of Work Made for Hire: Part 1," 19 December 2007), we began an examination of the concept of work made for hire, which will continue in this Advisor with the requirements of a work made for hire arrangement and some negotiating strategies for successful work made for hire arrangements.

In our last Advisor (see "The Nuts & Bolts of Work Made for Hire: Part 1," 19 December 2007), we began an examination of the concept of work made for hire, which will continue in this Advisor with the requirements of a work made for hire arrangement and some negotiating strategies for successful work made for hire arrangements.

Of all the areas in which technologists can make strong contributions, business intelligence (BI) is at the top of my list. After all, BI solutions touch people who make decisions. They are a primary means, a sensory organ, by which the firm comes to know its environments, both internal and external. The visual presentation layer of the tool interacts with human thought.

I've been thinking a lot about "mobile BI" -- the ability to view and interact with performance-related information on mobile devices like smartphones and PDAs. Mobile BI is not really very new.

This is the story about PD Circuits, Inc. (PDC), a small New England business that, for many years, viewed itself as a manufacturing company. It struggled to compete with similar companies around the world by delivering a higher level of quality products than its competitors.

This is the story about a small New England business that, for many years, viewed itself as a manufacturing company. It struggled to compete with similar companies around the world by delivering a higher level of quality products than its competitors.

How much of your IT budget goes for applications maintenance? By applications maintenance, I mean everything that is spent on an application after it is put into use. This includes enhancements, upgrades, repairs, vendor fees, and contractor support.

This Executive Report by Andrew Schwarz analyzes the state of service-oriented architecture (SOA) today based on data from a recent survey of 97 global firms; this survey updates a 2006 Cutter survey on a similar topic.

In a 2006 issue of Cutter Benchmark Review (CBR), Rudy Hirschheim and I talked about the emergence of service-oriented architecture (SOA). Since that time, there has been increased attention on SOA, both within the practitioner press and by vendors. Yet my own experiences from observing organizations implementing SOA caused me to wonder about the current state of SOA.

One of the most vital concerns for enterprise architecture (EA) is its evolution: the ability to purposely shape EA with regard to various small changes introduced to an IS environment. The issue of implementing changes to EA in a coordinated manner was the genesis for the concept described in the previous parts of this Executive Update series [1-3].

One of the most vital concerns for enterprise architecture (EA) is its evolution: the ability to purposely shape EA with regard to various small changes introduced to an IS environment. The issue of implementing changes to EA in a coordinated manner was the genesis for the concept described in the previous parts of this Executive Update series [1-3].

As we've done for the past couple of years, we are starting off the new year of CBR with another installment of our yearly series on trends and technologies for the coming year. This is the third yearly issue of CBR where we ask our contributors to look forward to the coming year and see what technologies and IT trends we can expect to endure, which ones are emerging, and which ones seem to be losing steam. Our ability to do trending and year-over-year comparisons is strengthening with every survey and the cumulating of results. We have been very careful in keeping some of the questions consistent so that we can comment on changes over time. Our contributors offer some interesting food for thought and insight based on the data.

Read the Addendum: Starting Off the New Year by Looking Back: Latin America

Read the Addendum: Starting Off the New Year by Looking Back: Latin America

Read the Addendum: Starting Off the New Year by Looking Back: Latin America

Read the Addendum: Starting Off the New Year by Looking Back: Latin America

This Addendum to Cutter Benchmark Review's 2008 global survey on IT trends drives an effort by Cutter Consortium to get the perspective of IT community users in Latin America (LA) via an LA-based survey.