Shared services and business process offshoring have in common some basic principles around the focus on value and accountability, so is the existence of a shared services (SS) model the optimal condition for organizational readiness in business process offshoring?

As enterprise architecture becomes more commonplace, many organizations realize that they don't have the appropriate level of skills in-house to staff the positions. An obvious approach is to look to a training program. In discussions about training, I'm often asked about certification programs for enterprise architects. Given that EA is a relatively new field, there aren't a lot of options for certification as yet, and just as important, there aren't any specific certifications that are generally recognized within the industry.

Last year, I submitted to you three perspectives for aligning business and IT in delivering business value: setting the right ground rules to begin the initiatives ("Setting the Ground Rules," 20 July 2005) and developing effective IT strategies to get business organizations engaged from the early stages of alignment initiatives ("Developing Effective IT Strategies," 3 August 2005), and recognizing the complexitie

A recent discussion on the NewGrange list server [1] began with the question, "Is there really anything that a project manager does that is more important than risk management?" As the discussion unfolded, there was a general consensus that a risk-centered perspective would definitely stand any project management in good stead. With that in mind, I would like to suggest a few risk-centered activities that are in keeping with an agile risk management.

For some time now, I've been saying that compliance applications have become a major driver for companies to apply business rules management systems (BRMS) (see, for example, "Rule-Based Systems for Customer Privacy Compliance," 10 May 2005).

I am working on a large project with a group of people on the opposite coast. I visit them once or twice a month for face-to-face discussions. On a recent visit, I learned a lot about improving productivity from some unexpected places.

A friend of mine runs a company that provides remote back-up and recovery. It's a very nice little company that makes money and provides a valuable service to its customers. About a year ago the company piloted its technology at my university. The results were great. They quoted us a price of around US $14 per month per user for automatic, almost limitless back-up with guaranteed recovery of any file within hours. Good stuff.

A friend of mine runs a company that provides remote back-up and recovery. It's a very nice little company that makes money and provides a valuable service to its customers. About a year ago the company piloted its technology at my university. The results were great. They quoted us a price of around US $14 per month per user for automatic, almost limitless back-up with guaranteed recovery of any file within hours. Good stuff.

In my last Advisor (see "Agile: A Set of Methods and Skills or a Leadership Mindset and Culture?" 1 June 2006), I argued that agile methods won't thrive unless the IT leadership mindset and culture is itself agile, and for most agile experts, that implies collaborative leadership.

The commoditization of IT, along with the low success rate of IT projects, has fueled the desire of corporate management to see realistic ROI numbers for IT expenditures. No longer will senior management accept the "We must innovate or be left behind" argument that got previous IT projects approved.

The commoditization of IT, along with the low success rate of IT projects, has fueled the desire of corporate management to see realistic ROI numbers for IT expenditures. No longer will senior management accept the "We must innovate or be left behind" argument that got previous IT projects approved.

Cutter Consortium recently surveyed 132 organizations worldwide to explore interest in and adoption of various relatively new IT technologies. Dennis Adams, chairman of the Decision and Information Sciences Department in the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston (Texas, USA), analyzed the data on IT Trends in 2006, and here are his thoughts on the trend of outsourcing:

Cutter Consortium recently surveyed 132 organizations worldwide to explore interest in and adoption of various relatively new IT technologies. Dennis Adams, chairman of the Decision and Information Sciences Department in the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston (Texas, USA), analyzed the data on IT Trends in 2006, and here are his thoughts on the trend of outsourcing:

An IT management idea that has not outlived its usefulness suggests how improved might be the performance of the IT organization were its members to undergo communications skills training. Put a router in a computer jock's hands and he's happy. Put him in front of a capital planning committee to justify the IT shop's 20% budget increase request and the result might be an audience recommendation to stick with routers.

A while ago, I took part in a meeting aimed at project scope definition. The goal of the meeting was to define the main aspects of business context, which required application of quite advanced statistical analysis tools (statistical scoring cards) in the scope of operational business processes decision supporting tasks (liabilities collection process).

A couple of weeks ago, I discussed recent Cutter research that found that just 10% of (end-user) organizations surveyed say they are currently running a data warehouse or data mart on Linux (see "Corporate Adoption of Open Source Linux for Data Warehousing," 20 June 2006).

WinFS is one of a set of frameworks that make up Vista's "Windows .NET Framework Extension" (WinFX). This is a superset of the .NET Framework, which is at the heart of Microsoft's .NET [1]. Alongside WinFS, WinFX also includes Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously Indigo), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, previously Avalon), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF).

As the problem child of business intelligence, knowledge management (KM) has suffered an identity crisis for some time, which explains organizations' total lack of enthusiasm today for any technology or management strategy yoked to those two words. As I pointed out in a previous Executive Report [1], KM means almost anything, therefore it means almost nothing.

As the problem child of business intelligence, knowledge management (KM) has suffered an identity crisis for some time, which explains organizations' total lack of enthusiasm today for any technology or management strategy yoked to those two words. As I pointed out in a previous Executive Report [1], KM means almost anything, therefore it means almost nothing.

Businesses must be vigilant about data security in today's global information-based economy. The dependence upon IT in this type of environment and the risks that are an inherent part of IT make it necessary for technology leaders to know the data protection laws and regulations that exist now more than ever before.

Stories of project and system failures due to miscommunication between business and IT abound, and despite a variety of real or perceived solutions -- be they business, technological, social, or other (including combinations of these) -- complaints, mostly from business stakeholders but also from IT, persist.

Most project and system failures occur as a result of miscommunication between business and IT. For example, Computerworld [1] recently described a failed application project for the Irish Health Service Executive that was budgeted originally at US $10.7 million for three years. Ten years and $180 million later (the price of a brand-new, 600-bed hospital), work on the project was halted.

According to an ancient Middle Eastern story, two nomadic tribes were preparing to go into battle over the right to use a well in the desert. The son of one of the tribal leaders asked his father why he was going into battle when the opposing tribe was so strong and would surely inflict heavy casualties on his father's tribe, to which his father replied: "I cannot let another tribe take our well."

"But we will probably lose the battle," the son persisted, "and they will get the well anyway."

In the time-honored tradition of earlier buzzwords such as "dot-com," "Web services," and "business process management," the media and the blogosphere are currently humming with discussion of a phenomenon called "Web 2.0." The implication of this name is that the original Web, "Web 1.0," has somehow become worn out or obsolete, and that it is fast being replaced with a newer, better model.

The blogosphere and, increasingly, the media are humming with excitement about Web 2.0. But what lies behind this catchy new buzzword, and does it really represent a step forward from the "old" Web? Even enthusiasts do not agree on just what defines a "Web 2.0 site," and when they brainstorm the question, the resulting feature lists can grow to remarkable lengths.