From 2000 to 2002, there was an intriguing and active debate about the relative merits of Extreme Programming (XP and its agile ilk) and the approaches advocated by the process movement, particularly the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM). Today that debate has gone largely silent. It's not that the issue is less interesting than it was.

Because customer data breaches continue to make headlines almost every week, it seems appropriate to ask how much of a financial hit an organization should expect to take should it suffer such an incident.

Because customer data breaches continue to make headlines almost every week, it seems appropriate to ask how much of a financial hit an organization should expect to take should it suffer such an incident.

The core dynamic of open source software is the sharing of code and ideas so that communities can collaborate and build software that meets their collective needs. Nothing new here; the early history of scientific computing also adhered to this dynamic. However, with the rise of business computing in the middle of the last century, a proprietary model -- keeping software code private and licensing the use of the executable product -- emerged and took hold of the industry.

Enterprise architecture (EA) provides much more real value to an organization when it pervades various aspects of day-to-day IT efforts. In Part I of this Executive Update series, I introduced a concept that binds EA with change management and refactoring [1].

Enterprise architecture (EA) provides much more real value to an organization when it pervades various aspects of day-to-day IT efforts. In Part I of this Executive Update series, I introduced a concept that binds EA with change management and refactoring [1].

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is making a significant impact on corporate computing -- including the application of BI and data warehousing.

In Part I of this two-part Executive Update series (Vol.

As we learned in Part I of this series (Vol. 8, No. 17), an increasing number of companies are using formal metrics to measure the success of their outsourcing arrangements, but are seeing mixed results from metrics use. Of the outsourcing professionals Cutter Consortium recently surveyed who said they use metrics (over 60%), many are satisfied with their metrics, but nearly half (46%) feel they could get more value from the ways they use measurements to assess success in their deals.

As we learned in Part I of this series (Vol. 8, No. 17), an increasing number of companies are using formal metrics to measure the success of their outsourcing arrangements, but are seeing mixed results from metrics use. Of the outsourcing professionals Cutter Consortium recently surveyed who said they use metrics (over 60%), many are satisfied with their metrics, but nearly half (46%) feel they could get more value from the ways they use measurements to assess success in their deals.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is rapidly evolving to emulate the software industry as a whole.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is rapidly evolving to emulate the software industry as a whole.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is rapidly evolving to emulate the software industry as a whole.

Some organizations are literally turning themselves inside out and outside in as a means of adapting to new ways of doing business brought about by technology. As 2008 looms, this trend should accelerate as more organizations see the potential in the application of these clever arrangements.

What do I mean by inside out and outside in? Let's explore each.

Some organizations are literally turning themselves inside out and outside in as a means of adapting to new ways of doing business brought about by technology. As 2008 looms, this trend should accelerate as more organizations see the potential in the application of these clever arrangements.

What do I mean by inside out and outside in? Let's explore each.

Some organizations are literally turning themselves inside out and outside in as a means of adapting to new ways of doing business brought about by technology. As 2008 looms, this trend should accelerate as more organizations see the potential in the application of these clever arrangements.

What do I mean by inside out and outside in? Let's explore each.

collaboration = innovation

Our ears hear an orchestra make noises, and our intellects conceive the patterns that make those noises into music; our eyes and ears see and hear human movement and speech, and our histrionic sensibility conceives the patterns that make them into action.

collaboration = innovation

Our ears hear an orchestra make noises, and our intellects conceive the patterns that make those noises into music; our eyes and ears see and hear human movement and speech, and our histrionic sensibility conceives the patterns that make them into action.

One of the most innovative practices of agile development is a contribution from extreme programming: test-driven development (TDD). Briefly, TDD is the art of building a software system along a growing set of automated developer tests, usually unit tests. This is comprised of a disciplined series of tiny steps to add new functionality:

When I teach architecture courses, one of the things that I try to convey to the class is the different levels of complexity/interconnectedness/theory that exist within architecture. It is not the goal of the course to make people experts at meta-models, but it is important for an architect to understand that architecture is founded on architecture of its own.

Two months ago, we began this three-part series on our just-completed Cutter survey on IT budget and costing practices (see "IT Budgeting/Costing Is a Mess -- and Hinders IT Governance, Part 1," 26 September 2007 and "IT Budgeting/Costing Is a Mess -- and Hinders IT Goverance, Part 2," 7 November 2007; for more on Cutter's survey, see the Cutter Benchmark Review, August 2007).

There are hundreds of books and a countless number of articles on the nature of corporate or organizational culture. However, there is general agreement that corporate culture is about "how things happen in this organization" and the underlying shared views about what are acceptable ways of behaving, feeling, thinking, and communicating.

I've been saying for years that companies should consider data warehousing and BI as strategic applications as opposed to some sort of supplemental capabilities to be "bolted on" to enterprise applications as an afterthought.

I certainly got people's attention when I raised the question of "open" versus "closed" architectures (see "Steve Jobs: Architecture, Platforms, and the Big Picture," 25 October 2007, and "Steve Jobs: Architecture, Platforms, and the Big Picture, Part 2," 8 November 2007).

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.