Project managers (PMs) are used to working fairly solo. If you have a PMO of, say, 15 PMs, each of whom is running, on average, five projects, then that's 75 projects that may be going on at any given time in the organization. Are we going to involve senior management in every one of those 75 projects? No. Should we, as project managers, expect that our senior management wants to have intimate knowledge of the status of each of those 75 projects? No.

Analyzing social media data in support of corporate BI practices is currently limited; however, it does appear that the practice is increasing. Moreover, interest among organizations in the possibility of analyzing social media data in the near future is quite strong.

Technical debt is not a new concept. The term itself was coined by Cutter Fellow Ward Cunningham more than 10 years ago. Certain components of technical debt, such as the Cyclomatic Complexity software metric, have been in use since 1976.

"I feel that people I trusted ... have let me down."

Threats to the enterprise come from a wide variety of areas and can appear suddenly or grow over time. Such risks include the following types:

IS departments interact with a multitude of stakeholders through the inception, development, and completion of projects.

I just returned from Cairo, Egypt, where I visited the Pyramids of Giza and other antiquities, as well as experienced some of the protests going on in Tahrir Square. As usual, I find it useful to draw parallels between things in the real world and EA. Here are three lessons that I took away from Egypt:

Rows and flows of angel hair, And ice cream castles in the air, And feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way.

-- "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell

In my experience, I've come to realize that there are six key areas that need special attention during an engagement to strengthen and maintain a healthy vendor/client relationship. Putting forth the proper effort in these areas can help keep the client satisfied and looking forward to future work with your delivery organization. Let's examine these six areas in greater detail.

With all the drama surrounding the US government's attempt to increase its debt ceiling limit, the talk of dire consequences that could result from failing to do so, as well as the economic problems that continue to plague various EU countries, it seems fitting to examine how the ong

The ancient philosopher, Aristotle, wrote a book about "making." In it, he used plays -- tragedies -- as his example of a complicated made thing, and he declared plot the "soul" of tragedy. He defined "plot" as the principle of arrangement for all the other parts.

If I were to design a certification program for agile consultants (not that I think such a program would be helpful!), one of the first questions would be "Have you ever settled a discussion about iteration length or sprint size?" If someone were to answer no, that person has probably never consulted in a real-world project.

If your company is considering a new mobile operating system, Windows Phone may be its most intriguing option.

Executives make decisions every day. They base them on their wealth of personal and professional experience. They base them on the available information sets.

When discussing why executives should leverage business architecture to facilitate strategic planning and transformation, it is useful to examine the challenges facing organizations making large-scale, multiyear IT investments.

The onslaught of mobile devices into the office is no surprise. It has been going on for years, with workers bringing their PDAs, BlackBerrys, and smartphones to work, and, most recently, their iPhones and iPads.

Advanced data visualization tools were first applied in the scientific and engineering domains for building models for complex applications involving extremely large data sets containing many variables, such as fluid flow analysis, aerodynamic simulation, and interpreting

Right now, most complex project managers (CPMs) are accidents of their experience rather than the product of a planned professional development program. To be really effective in managing complex projects, organizations will have to reverse that.

Here's a question for you: who do you think is planning to spend US $20 billion a year on cloud computing, every year? I can't imagine that you came up with any answer other than the US government, and you're right. Well, almost.

Cloud computing "as a platform" will change the economics of computing by replacing up-front CAPEX with a more scalable, variable cost structure based on an on-demand, (almost) friction-free entry/exit, elastic, pay-as-you-go m

In yet another conversation with a client, I was reviewing the activities that its architects were performing.

Recently, I wrote about the transition from a document-centric approach to knowledge management (KM) -- with its emphasis on content management systems (CMSs) and search engines -- to "social KM," in which, to quote myself: "It's not (just) what you know; it's who you know" ("It's Not (Just) What You Know; It's

Suppliers want customers to know three key things about client management. Let's look at each in more detail.

In December of 2010, I discussed BI and data warehousing developments that companies should be examining (in 2011), including mobile BI (see "What Lies Ahead: BI and Data Warehousing Predict

It's worthwhile (I think) to have clear language established and agreed upon for any discussion.