Last year, organizations across almost every industry became really serious about using mobile technology.

It is so easy, and tempting, to try to envision precisely how 2013 will unfold. Levels of business uncertainty abound, and yet for some reason, we invest significant chunks of our time trying to forecast what's going to transpire in the world around us and determine its lasting effects on our actions and lives.

CMMI is the de facto standard for process improvement in the software development domain. This standard encourages a systematic approach to process improvement. On the other hand, agile software development fosters high customer collaboration, rapid feedback, and empowerment of the individual developer. Both approaches have already been proven to be compatible and synergistic. Nevertheless, there is still great debate about CMMI's ability to "be agile" and agile methods' capacity to adapt to CMMI requirements without losing agility.

Welcome to the eighth-anniversary edition of my enterprise architect's New Year's resolutions. I hope it will give you food for thought and some inspiration for architectural growth in 2013.

Visualization has always played an important role in BI and analytics, aiding in our ability to process complex numerical information and improving our understanding. Graphics are an important part of BI dashboards, with graphs, plots, and speed dials providing instant and automatic access to analytics results.

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Cutter Senior Consultant Roger Evernden's introduction to the December 2012 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Enterprise Patterns" (Vol. 25, No. 12).

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we've compiled the most intriguing articles published by the Agile Product & Project Management practice this year for today's Advisor. How did we come up with this list?

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we've compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Business & Enterprise Architecture BI practice this year for today's Advisor. How did we come up with this list?

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we've compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Cutter IT Journal this year for today's Advisor. How did we come up with this list?

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we've compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Data Insight & Social BI practice this year for today's Advisor. How did we come up with this list?

"Clear your mind of cant," admonished Samuel Johnson in the 18th century, referring to foolish thinking.

As technical debt tools like Sonar and SQALE become more and more pervasive, the measurement and interpretation of technical debt are becoming fairly standard operating procedures in many of the development "shops" I work with. On a regular basis in my Cutter engagements, I use dashboards like those shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

Mobility will be one of the most sought-after enterprise initiatives in 2013. But implementing mobile devices and applications presents organizations with a number of issues and considerations.

Misunderstood, poorly identified, and often brushed aside, the gap between strategic business demands and the ability of deployed IT solutions to meet those demands grows by the day.

Collaboration methods and tools are evolving rapidly because of a confluence of recent trends:

The after effects of subtropical storm Sandy, which slammed into northern New Jersey late in October, are still being strongly felt. According to the latest count, some 30,000 businesses and homes in New Jersey and an additional 305,000 homes and 256,000 businesses in New York were destroyed or damaged by the storm.

Are you agile? You have probably heard this question before, and since you read this Advisor, chances are that you answered "yes" to it.

Although mobile computing is not new, there has been a lot of discussion lately about it, and about having an effective mobile/social strategy. The first question we need to ask is: what should your mobile strategy be?

There has been a lot of discussion about the need for organizations to adopt tablet devices (e.g., iPad, Android-based, PlayBook) to enable their employees to communicate via email, participate in mobile conferencing, and to access, view, and interact with corporate data via reports, dashboards, and other functionality while on the

Mobile device management will continue to play a key role in enterprise mobility in 2013 as organizations accelerate their use of smartphones and tablets in an effort to increase employee productivity and enable the business to respond more efficiently to customer wants and needs.

Some time ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article with the title "What the CFOs Want." It reflected the views of a significant number of CFOs from large and small companies, including CFOs from companies such as PepsiCo, Comcast, Ford, DuPon

Although the popularity of current agile values and practices have their roots in software development, there exists a significant opportunity for these agile values and behaviors to be applied across the overall business.

As organizations rediscover that it costs far more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, there appears to be a marked increase in assessing customers' experience. In this regard, customer surveys and focus groups are the typical tools of the trade.

With the US presidential election now being over, the results have been dissected by the pundits, political analysts, pollsters, and politicos. One of the most significant elements to emerge is the use of sophisticated analytics and Big Data -- in every aspect of both the Obama and Romney campaigns.