Strategic advice to leverage new technologies

The things you have to be careful about in architecture are those everybody knows but are not true. I was working recently with a friend trying to sketch out a migration plan for an organization whose IT systems were not too great.

Several weeks ago, I discussed the need for tools that can mine social media sites like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others (see "Mining Internet Social Media: Tomorrow's Tools Needed Today," 18 March 2008).

The title of this Advisor is very specific: "chartering agile projects," not "developing an agile charter." In the latter, "charter" is a noun; in the former, a verb (taking some liberties with the English language).

A little over a year ago, I wrote an Advisor called "Should Your Architect Write Code?" (29 November 2006). In it, I gave the typical consultant's answer: "it depends." Each organization is different, and each has more or less different requirements for their architects.

Many organizations continue to underestimate end-user training requirements for their business performance management efforts. This finding comes from a recent Cutter Consortium survey conducted in January 2008 of 101 end-user organizations (based worldwide).

While we are still trying to get our heads around the concepts and terminologies surrounding the Semantic Web, hints of a "Pragmatic Web" are finding their way into conversations and exchanges as some important new idea that is lurking in the background and hasn't quite yet made it onto the IT agenda.

"Are organizations better off building BI solutions when they need them and as quickly as they need them ... without a standardized and integrated DW?"

Here we go again with another virtual solution! It didn't work for data warehousing -- what makes us think it will work for BI? We still have to address the data chaos in our organizations. BI without a DW won't get us there, but BI with a DW will.