If a factory is torn down, but the rationality which produced is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic pattern of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves... There's so much talk about the system, and so little understanding.

Creating and maintaining a social endeavor is as much art as it is science, and after a decade of working with online communities and social networks, I have come to believe that they can't be managed but only influenced. In many cases, the communities are left to police themselves. A good example of this is the SAP developer community (called the Business Objects Community) with more than 70,000 developers a day participating.

Creating and maintaining a social endeavor is as much art as it is science, and after a decade of working with online communities and social networks, I have come to believe that they can't be managed but only influenced. In many cases, the communities are left to police themselves.

If you're of the same generation as I am, you probably remember the TV show "Dragnet" and Sergeant Joe Friday's famous line "Just the facts, ma'am" (his actual words were, "All we want are the facts, ma'am," but that's a different story).

Larry Gelwix has been the head coach of the Highland High School rugby team in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, for 36 years. During that time, his team has accumulated a 413-9 win/loss record; the most impressive record achieved by any sports coach -- professional or amateur -- ever. Wouldn't it be fantastic if our projects had a similar success/fail rate? Some aspects of Gelwix's coaching style are well in tune with some agile-lean values and principles:

Larry Gelwix ha sido el entrenador en jefe del equipo de Rugby del Highland High School en Salt Lake City, Nevada, E.U., por 36 años. Durante ese tiempo el ha acumulado un record de 413-9 juegos ganados-perdidos; el cual es el record más impresionante que ningún otro entrenador deportivo - profesional o amateur - a logrado jamás. ¿No sería fabuloso si nuestros proyectos tuvieran una taza de éxito-falla similar? Algunos aspectos del estilo de entrenamiento de Gelwix están a tono con algunos valores y principios agile-lean:

If it can be done, there is little that can beat a colocated and relatively homogenous team for cohesion, establishing a sound group dynamic, promoting communication in both verbal and nonverbal ways, and ensuring understanding. However, the real world is not always like that. In some cases, virtual teams are a fact of life and offer compelling advantages.

Back in April, I discussed MapReduce and its open source implementation, Hadoop (see "Hadoop, MapReduce, Cloudera, EC2, and BI," 14 April 2009). At that time, I said that I thought Hadoop offered exciting possibilities for enterprises to carry out large-scale data analysis and mining.

Crowdsourcing, as a making process, has problems because of its perceived lack of management control and the related uncertainty and risk regarding outcomes. At the same time, crowd creation1 appeals as a potential source of inexpensive innovation infusion, got from a global talent pool.

Agility is not reaching far enough into organizations. Too many agile development initiatives fall far short of their potential. Too many organizations have a few successful agile projects, but fail to sustain agility. Success on a few, or even more than a few, projects doesn't translate to wider acceptance of agile principles and practices in the organization.

"If you don't like change, you are going to like irrelevancy even less."

We've observed considerable interest in "IT governance" lately. For example, we've just completed a Cutter Benchmark Review (CBR) survey on the current IT governance practices around the world. We've also written several Advisors about the results and the interest we've seen in clients.

I am spending a fair amount of my time doing business process modeling (BPM) on either BPM or EA projects. BPM is becoming more and more important as organizations are increasingly committed to improving the way they do business.

The rate of change is only part of the challenge facing project sponsors. It is the agility of the response to the change that is also a key factor.

Believe it or not, IBM has developed an internal, private cloud-based BI analytics environment -- called "Blue Insight" -- designed to support its overall corporate sales, marketing, and product development needs. Moreover, IBM is now marketing and producing a version of this tool.

Many enterprises interested in agile adoption believe that their strategy should consist of sending a technical leader or manager to a training course and then having him or her take over a project (of course, there are also those who try to "save" money and buy a book on agile in replacement of training). But if you were to ask executives from companies that have succeeded in migrating to agile, the feedback would be not to cut corners, but to take the necessary training and get coaching.

Muchas empresas interesadas en adoptar agile creen que su estrategia debe consistir en enviar a un líder técnico o gerente a un curso de entrenamiento y ponerlo a cargo de un proyecto (claro que también hay empresas que intentan "ahorrar" dinero y compran un libro para reemplazar el entrenamiento). Pero si le preguntaran a ejecutivos de empresas exitosas en la migración a agile, su respuesta sería que no corten esquinas y tomen tanto el entrenamiento necesario así como la asesoría necesaria.

Recently, I've been involved in reviewing a number of "advanced" technological initiatives around the world -- let's call them "Initiative X" and "Initiative Y." Now, as familiar as I am with advanced modeling techniques, semantic/ontological thinking, and analytical philosophical concepts, such as "speech acts," I admit I've found both of these models difficult to follow and the intelle

With the holidays consuming a significant amount of our individual time and energy in the weeks ahead, it's important to recognize that effective risk governance actually takes some of the seasonal pressure off.

Some conversations you remember better than others. This one I will never forget. It was back about a dozen years ago when I was working with a large consulting firm and was somewhat perplexed and angry with executive management over failure to make a decision. The facts were clear and compelling. The metrics made the case for change.

Cloud computing is another iteration of a trend that began 40-plus years ago. In the beginning of the computer age, only large, wealthy enterprises and governments had computers. Early mainframe computers were huge power hogs and, by modern standards, impossibly slow; but for large numbers of tasks, they were much faster and economical than the way organizations were doing business.

It's no secret that today's college students have trouble writing clear text. I've been working this past year with a group of University of Maine undergrads, helping them build the writing skills that most of us assumed were honed in their middle school or high school years.

From a historical perspective, one could argue that there has been an evolution from inhouse provision of services, to outsourcing, then to offshoring, with crowdsourcing being the next stage. IT outsourcing expert Rob Aalders writes:

The debate on outsourcing raises serious questions. Should we outsource a core function? Why should someone else be able to manage part of our business better? Does outsourcing save money? What risks does outsourcing raise? What benefits does it bring?1

I have been talking with friends and colleagues about how data integration requirements and ensuring data integrity can pose problems for organizations implementing business performance management initiatives. I found this discussion so interesting that I decided to use the topic for this week's Advisor.

When they tell you to think outside the box, I was once warned, don't take the bait: they don't really mean it, and if you venture too far from the ranch, they'll permanently close the gate behind you. Innovation is a stepchild in most companies, even the ones that describe themselves as creative.