This is a continuation of previous Advisors on quality, specifically ones on intrinsic quality (see "Investigating Agile: Inside and Out," 19 June 2008 and "Intrinsic Quality?" 3 July 2008).

Looking at a software catalog, we see hundreds or even thousands of software titles. There are accounting systems, HR systems, manufacturing systems, personal productivity systems -- you name it. With so many systems out there, we would expect that it would be difficult to categorize all of them. However, from the point of view of a for-profit organization, the categorization is very straightforward. There are four.

Humans have, for many years, used IT and IS to enhance their environment and to learn about their surroundings. We have invented such information technologies as printing and such information systems as publishing to disseminate knowledge. In the process, we have created practices that in the long run and on a large scale damage this same environment (e.g., converting trees to paper).

I recently participated in a discussion about architecture frameworks and standards. While there are many frameworks -- such as Zachman, FEAF, and DoDAF -- only TOGAF qualifies as an official standard. By "official," I mean that it is created, published, and maintained by an accredited standards organization.

I recently stumbled upon a book by Thomas Craughwell about urban legends [1]. While reading Craughwell's book, I realized that I have been the victim of urban legends at work. Someone (sometimes me) has taken a legend as truth, acted on it, and had it end badly. Understanding what is legend and what is truth can help when managing IT and other work.

Here are three urban legends I've encountered at work and how they either backfired on me or caused me grief when trying to manage projects.

An interesting BI development trend that I believe is beginning to receive more interest from organizations is embedded, or "process-aware," analytics.

Back in the 1980s, and even recently, some have claimed that investments in IT haven't paid off [1, 2]. Fortunately, much research in the past decade has started to explain the complex relationship between IT and advantage and has shown, rather compellingly, that investments in IT do matter [3].

"We really like your proposal, but this idea to take the whole team into a one-day workshop every month -- 'retrospective' was what you called it? -- and have a three-day workshop each quarter is by far too expensive!" If I had a hit list of discussions I have had with managers over the last five years, this would probably be number one.

Quick, who was Ownit Mortgage Solutions?

Give up? Well, it was a US state of California company, one of the top 15 subprime mortgage companies, and it went bankrupt -- in early December 2006.

The financial company Merrill Lynch had a 15% stake in Ownit and, at the time, a few insightful commentators (mainly outside the US) asked whether Ownit was the canary in the US subprime mortgage coal mine. Looking back, it apparently was, although few financial institutions paid much attention to Ownit's demise, including Merrill Lynch.

In the last couple of Advisors (see "Is Parallel Computing the Next Big Thing?" 17 July 2008 and "What's the Next Big Thing?

Companies seek to concentrate on their value-adding processes and often consider IT infrastructure as a noncore area. Thus, a current trend in the organization of IT departments is outsourcing. When outsourcing, companies aim to reduce cost while getting a better grasp on service-level agreements (SLAs). However, IT -- especially business intelligence (BI) systems -- is becoming a key element for enabling agility in enterprise adaptation to changes in the business environment. This poses a serious challenge to traditional IT outsourcing contracts.

With all of the planning rules and principles we have covered so far in this series, there is only one rule that is always be applicable: once a plan is finished and approved, it is wrong! This is the only thing I have ever guaranteed my stakeholders about a plan. That is because I have found no one prescient enough to be able accurately to predict future events.

Last summer (see "Nurturing the Hidden Architect," 6 June 2007), I wrote about the importance of avoiding a common problem with the establishment of EA programs: namely, that it disempowers some of the very people who understand and have been looking after the "important stuff" that an EA program seeks to address.

Like the ever-present dandelion that seems to take over my lawn each May, we have seen centers of excellence (COEs) popping up all over the IT landscape. And like the persistent weed/flower, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My daughters think the bright yellow adornments to our lawn are "pretty" and simply don't understand why I work so feverishly each year to eradicate them. Likewise with COEs; some IT professionals embrace them, while others scorn them as a blight on the scenery. For many, it's not so much an objection to the COE concept as it is to the term.

No doubt about it: open source BI continues to make inroads with organizations of all makes and sizes. However, one important question surrounding the adoption of open source BI tools is how are end-user organizations actually using them?

Advanced data visualization tools have been around for some time. They first gained a following among scientists and engineers, who used them to build models for fluid-flow analysis, aerodynamic simulation, and other complex applications involving large data sets with many cause-and-effect variables.

With so much talk about the management of innovation, we have lost sight of something more important: innovation in management. When innovative products wow us, innovators of those products receive our praise and adulation. It is a time-honored tradition as old as civilization itself. After all, every age will have its Michelangelo.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines concrete as "an actual, specific thing or instance." Chip and Dan Heath (in Made to Stick ) state that "even the most abstract business strategy must eventually show up in the tangible actions of human beings." Concreteness, they say, is an indispensable component of sticky idea

In my last Trends Advisor ("Is Parallel Computing the Next Big Thing?" 17 July 2008), I discussed the hardware trend toward an increasing emphasis on parallel computing.

Behavioral economics has emerged as the hot subspecialty in the dismal science today. While traditional economic theory assumed people were always rational actors in their decision making, from our experience in IT investments, we know otherwise. What can behavioral economics tell us about how to avoid the pathologies that creep into IT investment decision making and destroy value creation?

Philosophers and scientists have been speculating about the operation of the human mind for at least 2,500 years. In recent years, the knowledge of how our minds actually process information has increased rapidly due to the research of neurologists, psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists.

Almost all organizations have some level of ability to see a snapshot of how their organization is faring on a regular basis. That ability allows them to keep an eye on how well the organization is meeting its objectives on a daily or sometimes even a real-time basis. These dashboards typically cover the organization's financial data at the very least and often extend into monitoring of production line outputs and related metrics.

IBM has announced it is buying business rules management systems (BRMS) vendor ILOG for Euro 215 million (approximately US $340 million). This deal is important because it gives IBM a leading BRMS it can use to add rule-based management and complex decision-processing capabilities to a range of IBM products and services.

Users are not interested in programs. If they are, it is our fault. What users want is systems that produce needed outputs with the minimum of additional input and with the maximum of integration (or the ability to integrate) with other systems with which they share data.

Customer collaboration is a cornerstone of agile development, but it is also one of the more difficult aspects of implementing agile. Of course, lack of customer involvement isn't unique to agile development -- software developers have had problems in this area ever since software entered organizational life.