Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

The trends that will define tomorrow are embedded in the dominant technologies of today, and the general laws of the past will continue to apply. We have seen the ascendancy of cloud computing, social networking, and mobility, along with movement in organization that supports efficiency and rapid change. Each represents the current stage along evolutionary paths that continue to affect both the business environment and IT.

Staffing the project management office (PMO) hasn't really had much attention in the literature. Some PMOs do not have a project manager staff, while others have a permanent project manager staff. Between those two extremes, there are a few variations.

Mary Kellerman would have been 41 this year. In 1982, she died at the age of 12 from a cyanide-laced Tylenol capsule, as did six others in the area of west Chicago, Illinois, USA.

If there is, it isn’t exactly clear.

Architects face many challenges in their jobs. Among them are creating architecture and applying architecture. I've said many times that creating architecture alone does not create value. Rather, the value from architecture comes when it is applied. In other words, value is delivered when architecture is used to influence the outcome of decision making, analysis, design, or implementation. Yet another challenge is that architects are often not the people who are responsible for doing the applying.

"Collaboration" and "agility" are two keywords that describe what is required from a business in order for it to flourish in the emerging business environment as a result of the introduction of information and communications technologies (ICT).

2010 is over. It's late and it's snowing. Time to assess where we are. Are we getting smarter, nastier, angrier, or happier? Have we learned anything at all over the past 50 years?

While many of us thought that cloud computing would take longer to become established than it has, that virtualization would virtualize at its own pace, and that strategic sourcing would stay tactical before it became strategic (in a decade or so), we're finding now that IT is moving at an unprecedented pace.