When I was a young boy, I remember my father telling me to beware of discussions and debates in which "reaction words" were used to evoke an emotional response that had little or nothing to do with the substance of the conversation. I have no idea why that lesson made such an impact on me, but it's one that we all see during debates about politics and religion.

When I was a young boy, I remember my father telling me to beware of discussions and debates in which "reaction words" were used to evoke an emotional response that had little or nothing to do with the substance of the conversation. I have no idea why that lesson made such an impact on me, but it's one that we all see during debates about politics and religion.

Among the challenges managers have had to face during the IT "revolution" of recent years, dealing with an increasingly specialized workforce has provoked particular angst. I saw this firsthand when I led a small, elite team of young programmers that supported mission-critical systems in an automaker's assembly plants. These plants are where the rubber hits the road in the auto business (literally).

I'm probably widely considered an enthusiastic supporter of Java and Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) application servers. I think both hold great potential for the development of important enterprise systems.

In today's environment of doing more with less, organizations are finding themselves with staff members that are burning out fast and are unable to deal with the growing work load.

In today's environment of doing more with less, organizations are finding themselves with staff members that are burning out fast and are unable to deal with the growing work load.

Alert Webster, there's a new word in the English language: Amazoned. The definition: It's what happens to a business that doesn't keep up with the Internet economy.

With the collapse of the dot-com industry, we don't hear much talk these days about the Internet revolutionizing mankind; Nicholas Negroponte's 1995 paean, Being Digital, probably wouldn't sell very well today. Indeed, with the collapse of the high-tech stock market, it's hard to find anyone saying positive things about the benefits of technology.

With the collapse of the dot-com industry, we don't hear much talk these days about the Internet revolutionizing mankind; Nicholas Negroponte's 1995 paean, Being Digital, probably wouldn't sell very well today. Indeed, with the collapse of the high-tech stock market, it's hard to find anyone saying positive things about the benefits of technology.

In a previous Advisor ( 12 July 2000), I discussed how to conduct an identification session that surfaces key impediments to an organizational or divisional objective. Armed with that information, you are ready to begin the second phase of the facilitation.

Time passes quickly. It's hard to imagine that I've been writing Architecture Advisors for three years now. In that time, of course, the world of software development has evolved rapidly, and, as I considered what to write this month, I thought that it might be good to step back and think, very broadly, about the status of software architectures today.