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.

When transitioning to agile, some traditionally educated project managers face a rude awakening when they first run an actual agile endeavor. They looked forward to the increased transparency and the daily reports they'd receive from their team, but suddenly they're hit by reality in the form of real customer contact.

Is another ox going to get gored?

Just as the Internet (mainly Google) has proved a challenge for newspapers, the music and movie industry, and for parents of kids gaming and surfing online, the Internet may finally begin reshaping the last pieces of the book and publication distribution business.

Information security incidents and privacy breaches often result from risky behavior by personnel who are unaware that the way they are handling information is unsafe. A significant factor for this problem can be attributed to a lack of security policies, along with inadequate or nonexistent training and lack of awareness communications. According to a recent Cisco study [1]:

As an EA and SOA consultant and authority, I get a lot of questions about architecture, its value, how to implement it, and how to roll it out to an organization. Occasionally (like last week), the questions are so off base that they amaze me. Are managers really this out of touch (no need to answer that)?

A lot has been said about the new generation, which is often referred to as "digital natives." The digital natives act, think, and feel differently from older generations in many respects. For example, they embrace new technologies faster and do not become very angry when the new technologies are not mature. They expect immediate results, they expect personalization, and they also work, feel, and think in a "threaded" manner.

Enterprise data warehousing specialist Teradata Corporation is the latest analytics database vendor to join the cloud movement. Last week, Teradata introduced its first product offerings targeted at organizations wanting to take advantage of virtualization and cloud technologies for data warehousing and BI applications.

A spider is an eight-legged arachnid that has a head attached to a central body. Pull a leg off a spider and most can still walk, even if a little lopsided. Cut off the head, and the spider dies. Not so the starfish. While many people know that if you cut off a starfish's leg, it will grow back, most don't know that a starfish's major organs are replicated throughout its body.

From a certain perspective, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software architecture is just plain silly.

As the death toll has reached 1,000, there has been a lot of press coverage in the US this past week concerning the shortages in the availability of the swine flu vaccine. Planned vaccination clinics for the millions of high-risk individuals in the US, including pregnant mothers, children under the age of 10, and healthcare workers across the country, have been postponed en masse with no word on when they will be rescheduled.

Open source software (OSS) has been entering the enterprise almost invisibly for a number of years, initially in infrastructure as Web servers and replacement for proprietary Unix and then branching out into a diverse range of infrastructure components, embedded code, and applications. It has been invisible for a variety of reasons:

Many open source components initially introduced were highly technical and, therefore, beneath the radar of corporate executives.

In my last Advisor ("How EA Shapes Urban/Transportation Planning," 7 October 2009), I restated some of the reasons that my colleagues and I have chosen urban (and transportation) planning as the model for thinking about EA while developing the Business Enterprise Architecture Modeling (BEAM) methodology.

In my article in the July 2009 Cutter Benchmark Review (see "Looking at Personal Productivity Tools and Systems,"Vol. 9, No. 7), I wanted to identify some of the tools, techniques, attitudes, and environmental factors that could use a tune-up so that people could continue to get the job done but in a way that lets them go home at the end of the day without work lurking behind them.

In an outsourcing arrangement, many of the risks to personally identifiable information (PII) are the same as for internally processed information. Controlling the spread of PII within the outsourcer's IT environment is key, as is ensuring that access controls are effectively used, the outsourcers networks are secure, and encryption is used in association with organizational sensitive data and PII. Even administrative controls, such as employee background checks, have applicability in an outsourcing arrangement.

I've said for some time now that the use of mashups in the enterprise would increase, especially when it comes to their use for BI and other applications that support decisions. One reason for this is that the technology has been evolving rapidly and vendors focusing on mashups have been growing in number. End-user organizations have also expressed a definite interest in using mashups.

A big idea, that collaborative innovation requires us to reconceive our idea of "failure," seems to be taking hold. We're getting it that an iterative process will include segments that don't achieve closure, don't solve the problem, aren't ready for the market. We're getting it that, since we can't foresee an emergent outcome, we have no way of knowing when exactly we'll get there.

For any IT governance to work, we need the active participation of business management in these decision-making areas:

Project approval (e.g., project sponsorship)

Decision-making processes (e.g., setting the ground rules for making prioritization decisions)