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Is It Time to Say "Bye Bye" to Best Buy?
Big Agile, Big Change
When Communicating, Use Format to Your Advantage
When you open an email and see a big chunk of text, are you excited to dig right in and read it? Probably not. (Yet, do you ever find yourself sending those types of emails? Probably.) The reason why you lack excitement in reading such an email is obvious. Large chunks of text generally don't get the extra thought required to pare them down and helpfully section them off with subheads. Such content is basically a first draft, with possibly a once-over edit pass. It takes less time to construct.
Industry Data Models
The data warehouse, unlike the other IT systems in an enterprise, is an exclusive data platform with a data model as its backbone. In general, one may conceive an IT system to be a combination of processes and data. However, the data warehouse is only about data, and even the processes within a warehouse are data-centric. This trait of data warehouses prompts different vendors, big and small, to develop data models for every industry (called "industry data models") as a standard offering to decrease the turnaround time in developing data warehouses.
IT Value Creation
A remarkably prescient group of early technology pioneers first conceived the vision underlying modern, Internet-based IT value creation. In a 1945 Atlantic Magazine article, "As We May Think," Vannevar Bush anticipated the interconnectedness and indexing structures of the Web. Later, in 1968, J.C.R.
Agile Code
Much like agile requirements aim toward a goal, agile engineering practices help teams write code that meets the goals of an iteration and changes direction easily. To be an agile team, you need agile code. The agility of a code base is related to the architecture, development practices, and the delivery model. As working software is the main way of evaluating progress on an agile project, agile engineering practices can drive agile planning techniques when they are lacking.
What's New in TOGAF 9.1?
Tackling Today's Enterprise Security Challenges
[From the Editor: This week's Advisor is from Cutter Director Mike Rosen's introduction to the April 2012 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Tackling Today's Enterprise Security Challenges" (Vol. 25, No. 4).
Creating a Governance Brand with Your Own Lingua Franca
Pitfalls of Agile XXI: Lost Contact
My Newfound Appreciation for BPM
In my more recent engagements, I have had the opportunity to move away from consulting within the infrastructure world of SOA and into the realm of pure business process management (BPM). Prior to that, I had more of a conceptual appreciation as to how BPM technology could integrate within an SOA.
One Organization's Approach to the Mobile App
In February 2010, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implemented its first mobile app: the FCC Mobile Broadband Test (see "About the Consumer Broadband Test (Beta)"). Computech, Inc., in a joint development effort with M-Lab and Ookla, led the building of this crowdsourced app, which was designed to provide a quick, simple way to check the performance of an Internet connection against the advertised broadband speed.
Gaining Customer Insight
Habits form an important and inevitable part of our lives. We are all about baselining our routine activities into habits and conserving our energy for more productive and interesting tasks. These habits exist as patterns in customer behavior data (e.g., clickstream, logs, social media, sales). The right kind of data, aided by an intelligent analytical solution, can identify these habits and yield valuable customer insights.
Reflections on Innovation -- Part VI: More About Art
In my last Advisor ("Reflections on Innovation — Part V: Words, Words, Words"), I suggested that you read Ian McGilchrist's book The Master and His Emissary, where McGilchri
Process as a Service
Improve Your Architectural Skills with Critical Thinking
One of the most important skills of an architect (be it a business architect, IT architect, or enterprise architect) is that of “critical thinking.” It has been defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking as: "the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or gener
Improve Your Architectural Skills with Critical Thinking
One of the most important skills of an architect (be it a business architect, IT architect, or enterprise architect) is that of “critical thinking.”
Gaining Customer Insight
Habits form an important and inevitable part of our lives. We are all about baselining our routine activities into habits and conserving our energy for more productive and interesting tasks. These habits exist as patterns in customer behavior data (e.g., clickstream, logs, social media, sales). The right kind of data, aided by an intelligent analytical solution, can identify these habits and yield valuable customer insights.
How Some Enterprises Are Using Hadoop
Inflection Points for Decisions and Profit, Part II
In my previous Advisor ("Inflection Points for Decisions and Profit, Part I"), I pointed out that all exchanges of goods and services are exchanges of risk and opportunity between the pa
The Value Proposition
Cloud Security: A Red Herring?
It may seem reckless to challenge the notion that cloud computing poses new security risks. IT magazines are full of dire warnings, and cloud providers, as well as security consortia, are now holding regular conferences such as SecureCloud. Yet some claims may be overstated, while others are ignored.