I attended a users' conference last week for an enterprise architecture tool. Keeping with Cutter's vendor-neutrality policy, I won't go into detail about the product, but I do want to report on my overall impressions and answer some of the common questions that I heard there.

No one will argue the fact that the overall responsibility for managing a project falls to the project manager. By definition, that is true. By job description, that is true. All project managers understand, or should understand, that the target is on them when they accepted the role, and it simply can't be passed along to someone else.

Last month, I discussed some of the factors influencing the growing adoption of data mining and predictive analytics (see "The Slow, Steady Climb for Data Mining, Predictive Analytics," 1 February 2011).

I have what some people call a "Man Van." It has 4WD, alloy wheels, big ice-grip snow tires, tinted glass, and a 200-watt stereo. David E. Davis, past editor of Automobile Magazine, once wrote that his Man Van was his favorite car, even compared to his Ferrari and Dodge Viper.

Back in the 1960s, then-Prime Minister of England Harold Macmillan was supposedly asked by a journalist what might blow his government's policies off course: "Events, dear boy, events," was his response.

Today we have no shortage of people opining away at the cause-and-effect relationships between educational inputs (schools, teachers, pedagogy) and outputs (student knowledge and success) with nowhere near a sufficient understanding of how the human brain actually works.

Agile software development and agile project management have shown considerable success in helping organizations develop better software and better manage development projects in the face of changing requirements and evolving technologies. In one sense, agile is about managing rapidly changing project factors and requirements.

I was speaking with some fellow CIOs and other business leaders recently about their sources of competitive advantage. A few were not able to articulate clearly from whence sprang their source of sustainable advantage in the market.

Agile software development and agile project management have shown considerable success in helping organizations develop better software and better manage development projects in the face of changing requirements and evolving technologies. In one sense, agile is about managing rapidly changing project factors and requirements.

Over the past few decades, the perception of IT has evolved dramatically from an internal unit that provides back-office support to a meaningful group that supports the organization's business processes and, finally, to a revenue-generating division. This "new era" IT is more involved in the business elements that allow the organization to grow, profit, and prosper. In many ways, IT is now responsible for providing the technical leverage that ultimately leads to gaining advantage over competitors.

When evaluating suppliers, clients tend to focus on suppliers' resources because these are highly visible onsite tours, balance sheets, and résumés. But they should be more interested in suppliers' ability to turn these resources -- their physical and human assets such as physical facilities, technologies, tools, and workforce -- into capabilities that, in turn, can be combined to create high-level customer-facing competencies.

Real-time coverage of the recent disasters in Japan, the social unrest in the Middle East and Africa, and the Allied bombing campaign underway in Libya all expose the limitations of such information; specifically, the clear need to put real-time information into some kind of context with the use of additional, supplemental information.

As we begin to emerge out of the recession, there will be a tendency to take care of the technology pieces that have been neglected for years, such as server and software upgrades. While some of those things absolutely must be addressed, managers are encouraged to look at this as an opportunity to innovate around what needs to be done.

Last we heard from this thread, we ended with an example of visualization's time-saving benefits (see "'Click Here to Learn This One Crazy Secret...'" 27 January 2011, and "V Is for Victory --

In the US and in industrial countries around the world, the recent economic crisis has triggered the first serious consideration of national spending priorities for more than a decade. Supposedly, every option is being explored and unfortunately, in many cases deficits are being balanced out by reduction in long-term investments in existing infrastructure.

It is all too easy to make high-level general statements about CIOs and IT organizations. Often these statements work from the assumption that all CIOs and all IT organizations are alike. For example, since the turn of the year, we've seen a lot of "CIO's Concerns for 2011" and similar articles.

In last week's Advisor (see "Short-Term Tactical Approaches to Application Modernization and Rationalization, Part I," 9 March 2011), I provided some background about the problems associated with many legacy modernization

There's no question that social media intelligence is a priority. Without social media intelligence, how can anyone know what their customers think, who they like, and who they hate? But there's more to social media than meets the eye. Understanding the nature and trajectory of the cloud is a significant factor. It also enables additional primary and secondary business analyses. For example, the entertainment industry's social media intelligence might well focus on what people are saying about specific movies, television programs, and radio spots.

We're now seeing organizations across almost every industry develop mobile BI applications that employ interactive dashboards, reporting, visualization, and other functionality tailored to specific users or groups that extend the usefulness of their BI and performance management systems.

The title "project manager" is cheap. In some organizations it is given to administrative assistants, lead technicians, or senior business analysts in lieu of a raise. Senior PMs play a vital role on large, complex, mission-critical projects.

Once again, I am sitting here, sipping a cup of coffee at my local McDonald's, looking across the parking lot at the steady stream of people going into the H.H. Gregg electronics store that took up residence in what previously was a Circuit City electronics store.

This is the sixth and final Advisor in this series on green IT. In it, I briefly outline the importance and usage of the ISO14000 family of standards associated with carbon emissions.

If I could summarize my experience in presenting business cases into one sentence, it would be the following: it is more important to be credible rather than accurate.

Do you have a new development project in planning that will replace an existing application? If so, then it is likely that you are planning a legacy modernization. According to a conversation with Capers Jones, 70% of "new" application development is to replace a legacy system.

Whether it is the collapse of a particular bank or the global financial crisis, weakness in critical thinking and inadequate strategic analysis in decision making appear to make significant negative contributions. Business analysis (BA) offers an answer by sharpening the capabilities of critical thinking and analytical decision making.