GM's recent decision to initiate a "multisourcing" strategy that will result in it parceling out its IT outsourcing responsibilities to multiple solution providers has gained a lot of attention within the IT industry, as well as among corporate management and business publications.

Maybe I've been in the IT industry too long, but I don't get what all the commotion is about.

Some people compare opinions to body parts; everybody has them. Perhaps the same could be said about capability maturity models (CMM), which seem to have sprung up like weeds. Maturity models were first pioneered by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI, a federally funded research organization associated with Carnegie Mellon University) in the early 1990s as a way to quantify software engineering practices and provide comparisons among organizations.

There are two components to post-project evaluations that focus on two related areas: how well the project was executed and what was the business impact it created. This second Advisor in a series of three articles on post-project evaluations takes a closer look at the first area, assessing project performance.

I have never found the grim statistics on IT project failures particularly illuminating or convincing. These statistics and their conclusions -- basically, that IT departments are consistently failing at IT and have to try harder, again -- show up periodically from research companies and spur a flurry of funereal and pontificating commentary within the IT community.

I have never found the grim statistics on IT project failures particularly illuminating or convincing. These statistics and their conclusions -- basically, that IT departments are consistently failing at IT and have to try harder, again -- show up periodically from research companies and spur a flurry of funereal and pontificating commentary within the IT community.

Content managing has only recently been recognized as a profession. And through the growth of the Internet, the need for content management has become increasingly important. The catch is that very few people know how to do it well. It's not that the technology is poor or that we lack processes for implementation and ongoing management of content management systems (CMS); rather, it's a lack of people with the right level of understanding to do the job.

Coming into the restaurant at the conference, Ray spotted a table of old friends waving him over to join them.

"Congratulations on your promotion, Ray! Your company is lucky to have you as its CIO," Fran said. "What's your plan?"

Henry Ford may have given us the inexpensive automobile but Alfred Sloan gave us the model year. Ford believed that mass production was based on making millions of one standardized product. Sloan, on the other hand, believed that mass consumerism was based on changing automobile styles every year so that people would be tempted (encouraged) to buy a new car every few years rather than every decade. This was called style-based (or marketing-based) obsolescence.

Recently, the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) revealed that its database containing approximately 325,000 names of alleged international terrorist suspects (or people suspected of helping them) is actually inflated by about 135,000 extra names. This revelation serves to highlight a problem that many organizations of all sizes and focus struggle to deal with: duplicate customer names and records.

In my last Trends Advisor ("Real Enterprise Data Architecture, Part 1," 23 February 2006), I touched on the issue of enterprise data architecture from a conceptual standpoint. I suggested that being an enterprise data architect (as opposed to a DBA or data modeler) demands that you take a very high-level view of the company.

Information security risk assessments have become one of the more important techniques to minimize operational risk, improve the security posture in a company, and meet current regulations and standards. Risk assessments have long been used in other domains, such as software and system development and the financial and insurance industries. In information security, risk assessments began as primarily technological evaluations -- an identification of the known [1] vulnerabilities remaining in operational systems and system components.

Information security risk assessments have become one of the more important techniques to minimize operational risk, improve the security posture in a company, and meet current regulations and standards. Risk assessments have long been used in other domains, such as software and system development and the financial and insurance industries. In information security, risk assessments began as primarily technological evaluations -- an identification of the known [1] vulnerabilities remaining in operational systems and system components.

Scrum is probably the most popular agile method right now in the USA. The power of Scrum is its simplicity. There are only a handful of Scrum rules and so it is easy to get a team started with Scrum [1]. And yet Scrum can unleash the potential of a team and dramatically improve its productivity within weeks. A Scrum team works on one project at a time and Scrum provides a toolkit to cut through complexity so that everyone can focus on doing their job rather than fending off multiple drains on their time.

There are many key moments in projects. What I do during those moments greatly influences the outcome of the project. There is good news here in that we as project managers can learn to recognize these moments and respond well.

I believe a key moment in a project occurs when someone brings me some not-so-good news about the work. This can happen many times in every project. There is a set of activities preceding such a moment:

After performing rigorous due diligence, reviewing several RFP (request for proposal) responses, and evaluating a selected number of suitable vendors, you picked one or more partner(s) to work on your sourcing initiatives. What makes you so confident that you and your partner will have a successful relationship? What assures you that you two are really in this relationship together, for the long haul?

After performing rigorous due diligence, reviewing several RFP (request for proposal) responses, and evaluating a selected number of suitable vendors, you picked one or more partner(s) to work on your sourcing initiatives. What makes you so confident that you and your partner will have a successful relationship? What assures you that you two are really in this relationship together, for the long haul?

Building a business case is a necessary prerequisite in supporting any major investment decision. Building the business model, calculating costs and quantifying benefits, analyzing cash flow over time, and calculating financial indicators, such as net present value, internal rate of return, return on investment (ROI), or whatever else is required for getting the management approval, are essential parts of "investment engineering." This is the kind of discipline that creates informed and responsible spending decisions, right?

Vendors today are introducing new products that apply advanced algorithms designed specifically for e-mail analysis. The result is an emerging market: e-mail intelligence.

Vendors today are introducing new products that apply advanced algorithms designed specifically for e-mail analysis. The result is an emerging market: e-mail intelligence.

Vendors today are introducing new products that apply advanced algorithms designed specifically for e-mail analysis. The result is an emerging market: e-mail intelligence.