The year 2007 portends to be a very contentious one for US corporate governance, which may have implications around the world. Both Congressman Paul Sarbanes, a Democrat from Maryland, and Congressman Michael Oxley, Republican from Ohio, are retiring from the US Congress this year.

The year 2007 portends to be a very contentious one for US corporate governance, which may have implications around the world. Both Congressman Paul Sarbanes, a Democrat from Maryland, and Congressman Michael Oxley, Republican from Ohio, are retiring from the US Congress this year.

The offshoring conventional wisdom at hand is that the first wave concentrated on cost reductions. The second wave will concern itself with core competencies; those business processes that contribute to a distinctive advantage in the marketplace are core competencies that organizations would do well to keep in house. Those processes that are not central to company business or that the organizations do not perform well are candidates for offshoring. This statement is far too broad to take at face value.

The offshoring conventional wisdom at hand is that the first wave concentrated on cost reductions. The second wave will concern itself with core competencies; those business processes that contribute to a distinctive advantage in the marketplace are core competencies that organizations would do well to keep in house. Those processes that are not central to company business or that the organizations do not perform well are candidates for offshoring. This statement is far too broad to take at face value.

Enterprise architecture, as with many other approaches or methodologies, is sometimes perceived as yet another buzzword or promise of paradise for managers, although not for operational workers for whom it may frequently be something abstract, incomprehensible, remote, and perhaps potentially dangerous. Among the few companies that have begun their struggle with EA implementation, only a minority can be described as really successful.

Practically every client we work for admits, sheepishly, that they do not examine the business impact of projects after implementation. There's no post-implementation audit, apparently. They're too busy doing new projects. Given that companies spend a lot of money and attention on IT projects, this seems strange. Shouldn't we be assessing the actually realized return-on-investments (ROI) for projects?

Well, sure. But what's the point?

Engineers and technical people should attend budget and other business meetings. Five years ago I wouldn't have entertained that thought. Now I believe it strongly. Without the technical knowledge, I have seen people make decisions that no one would think possible.

After we've done a risk assessment, we should begin to develop management plans for the highest-priority risks. There are four general approaches that can be used to manage any particular risk.

De facto, this is what you do if you do not do anything else. It is appropriate for low-impact risks that are not worth actively managing. And for some very high-impact risks, it may be the only available course of action.

In February, I discussed the convergence of the "two BPMs": business PROCESS management (BPM) and business PERFORMANCE management (see "Merging the Two BPMs: Opportunities Abound," 21 February 2006).

In February, I discussed the convergence of the "two BPMs": business PROCESS management (BPM) and business PERFORMANCE management (see "Merging the Two BPMs: Opportunities Abound," 21 February 2006).

When people ask me when I first became interested in enterprise architecture (EA), I tell them that I've always been interested in really large systems problems, but it was probably when I first began to work on Data Warehousing that I came to understand the essence of EA. My reading of data warehousing history is that the discipline goes back to some IBMers working in Europe in the early/mid-1980s.

In my last Advisor on agile cultures (see "Agile Integration -- Culture," 12 October 2006), I touched on the concept of open information and wanted to expand on that -- especially the difference in looking at information as an "excuse" versus an "early warning." There is an old project management axiom that states, "Bad news gets worse with age," which admonishes project leaders and others on a project team to surface bad news early so that management (in conjunction with the team, we hope) can decide on

Homeland security focuses on preventing catastrophic terrorist attacks and responding to major disasters -- and reaches out to the private sector for partnership in securing the economic enterprise. Yet the ability of companies to be effective in helping to manage high-end events depends, in large measure, on the agility, flexibility, and resilience with which they are able to deal with more probable and far less catastrophic business disruptions.

Homeland security focuses on preventing catastrophic terrorist attacks and responding to major disasters -- and reaches out to the private sector for partnership in securing the economic enterprise. Yet the ability of companies to be effective in helping to manage high-end events depends, in large measure, on the agility, flexibility, and resilience with which they are able to deal with more probable and far less catastrophic business disruptions.

One of my insurance industry clients decided to leverage a global sourcing model in building its new billing system. The CIO instructed her direct reports to focus on three major elements of the model: (a) collaboration across the extended enterprise to promote seamless interaction among internal and external resources, (b) optimize return on existing investments and the cost of ownership, and (c) deliver quantifiable business results each time and every time.

One of my insurance industry clients decided to leverage a global sourcing model in building its new billing system. The CIO instructed her direct reports to focus on three major elements of the model: (a) collaboration across the extended enterprise to promote seamless interaction among internal and external resources, (b) optimize return on existing investments and the cost of ownership, and (c) deliver quantifiable business results each time and every time.

In October, OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems) approved the Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture V1.0. A lot of people have been asking what it is, what to do with it, and how it will impact their SOA initiative.

The reference model document itself states:

In parts one and two of this series (see "Evaluating the External Technological Environment," 26 July 2006, and "Evaluating the External Technological Environment, Part 2: Digging Deeper into the Competitive Landscape," 30 August 2006), I suggested that there are three aspects to the external technological envi

Many excellent books and articles have been published concerning the need for simplicity and about the serious, and often dangerous, problems due to complexity (to business ventures in general and to IT in particular). I will not provide a survey of all this literature (although many examples are mentioned in this Executive Report), but instead will start with a couple of revealing statements that shed some light on these complexities.

Serious problems associated with IT system complexity have been around for a long time. However, with widespread usage of such systems, more and more end users and businesses started to speak out, some of them quite emphatically.

In Part I of this two-part Executive Update series, I provided an overview of the methodology and approach used to develop detailed business processes for managing an IT environment, specifically related to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and its service management component. A real-life case study was presented, describing one of my clients -- a large organization with more than 50,000 employees that had limited understanding of ITIL or the benefits of service management.

In my role as enterprise architecture (EA) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) consultant, some o

Many IT organizations are beginning to implement service-oriented architectures (SOAs), yet some

This is the third in a series of four Executive Updates in which I am analyzing the results of a recent Cutter Consortium survey on service-oriented architecture (SOA).

This issue of Cutter Benchmark Review focuses on a topic of great interest to both information systems (IS) professionals and executives in other areas: strategic information systems alignment. For the purpose of this issue, we define alignment as the fit, or correspondence, between business and information systems strategy.