An interesting question has recently come up in a number of client situations and informal discussions with CIOs and other IT professionals.

An interesting question has recently come up in a number of client situations and informal discussions with CIOs and other IT professionals.

In spite of the length of what follows, be aware that this is just a top-level description of what agile methods do. Please suspend disbelief, work through any flaws in the prose, and ask "Yes, but ..." questions as they come up.

Here are aspects of scheduling that I'd like to address:

As is the norm on the 4th of July holiday weekend in the US, classic patriotic-themed movies such as Casablanca occupy the airwaves. One of my favorite scenes from the movie is where Captain Renault informs Rick that he is going to close down his nightclub.

As is the norm on the 4th of July holiday weekend in the US, classic patriotic-themed movies such as Casablanca occupy the airwaves. One of my favorite scenes from the movie is where Captain Renault informs Rick that he is going to close down his nightclub.

An interesting question has recently come up in a number of client situations and informal discussions with CIOs and other IT professionals.

An interesting question has recently come up in a number of client situations and informal discussions with CIOs and other IT professionals.

One of the interesting aspects of enterprise architecture work within any big organization is taking the responsibility for setting up standards governing the development of information systems. The problem with standards is that they come in great numbers and vastly different qualities. Typically, a standard belongs to one of the following species:

At the end of 2004, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey in an effort to gain some insight into subscribers' opinions about SOX before they actually had to torture their IT systems into compliance with its wide-reaching and potentially burdensome provisions. We plan to follow up this effort later this year to see how these impressions have been altered by the compliance experience.

Recent press articles argue that implementing the requirements of SOX has forced the CIO to report to the CFO rather than the CEO. The articles claim that because SOX's reporting requirements are primarily financial, the information systems and organization to implement the regulations naturally fall under the control of the CFO.

Sarbanes-Oxley is the US federal government's reaction to the corporate debacles of Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and several other companies. The law requires specific financial reporting by public companies, with severe penalties for willful misrepresentation of financial results or forecasts.

Although SOX applies directly to publicly owned companies, its provisions also apply to privately held companies. The difference lies in the enforcement provisions and penalties for noncompliance.

Much has been written about how SOX will transform finance in corporate America. Less has been written about the needed transformation in IT to support SOX and improve corporate governance. And even less has been written on how technology -- in particular, e-business software tools -- can assist enterprises in improving the quality and timeliness of data.