Giving advice about the importance of teamwork is right up there with talking about the virtues of mom and apple pie. Yet, considering that 66% of development teams choose to work around their corporate data groups, clearly this isn't happening. It's no good having the best architecture in the world if the development teams aren't interested in it.

Approximately 19% of end-user organizations' business performance management applications currently provide proactive alerting and event notification capabilities. However, indications are that use of such facilities is expected to increase as organizations progress with their business performance management efforts.

Watching flight attendants doing service on a short-distance flight, you can learn a good lesson about global process optimization. There is just enough space in the aisle for a single trolley; overtaking is impossible. In most cases, the first attendant starts his service in row one and then services the rows consecutively.

Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.

-- William of Occam

With the release of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) version 3, the best-practices framework leaves behind an exclusive focus on quality IT processes aligning with business for an emphasis on process excellence delivering high-value services to customers. The change is subtle but speaks volumes (five, actually) about the risk-mitigation possibilities within it.

I received a lot of feedback from my 28 November 2007 Advisor, "Governance from Day Three" -- most of it positive. It seems that governance is generally thought of as a dirty word. I also got some differing views, however, many with some valid points.

Assumptions => Contingencies

Business continuity management (BCM) is no longer a luxury but an essential element of an organization's risk-management program. For an organization to have any hope of survival, the BCM process must embrace risk, emergency, and recovery planning in order to manage a "crisis" or "disaster" event. Undertaking any business continuity activity should form part of a wider planning structure; it is not an end in itself but a means to an end.

IT project dashboards provide senior management with a top-down view of their organization -- allowing them to see a high-level, up-to-date status and drill down to the details that might concern them. Like any interface, the dashboard can obscure as much as it illuminates. Moreover, the assumptions used in its construction and maintenance will color the conclusions one draws from it and bear critically on its strategic utility.

The connection between IT investments and success with the customers who pay the firm money is often indirect, ambiguous, and difficult to establish.

Here's an interesting finding from a recent Cutter Consortium survey: approximately 20% of end-user organizations with business performance management initiatives are using so-called Web 2.0 technologies to support their performance management efforts.

As more organizations face transitions to agile methods and these transitions involve larger segments of such organizations, the need for transition or transformation strategies increases.

It is often said that there are only two things you can be sure of in life: death and taxes. Well, in today's world, I think you have to add three more things to that list -- change, technology, and learning.

collaboration = innovation

During my years as an application architect, I always appreciated good project management. In fact, I tried my own hand at being a project manager but fortunately had the sense to recognize quickly that I wasn't very good at it.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) methodology has much to say about the management of technical changes to an organization's IT portfolio and less about the business change introduced by those technical changes. However, given the amount of attention ITIL pays to the subject of change suggests that organizations that respect ITIL will develop this specific analytical capacity just by adopting the methodology.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show more than 10 years ago to discuss "network computers." This was when a lot of ahead-of-their-time ideas were out there, like Apple's Newton and IBM's voice-recognition applications.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show more than 10 years ago to discuss "network computers." This was when a lot of ahead-of-their-time ideas were out there, like Apple's Newton and IBM's voice-recognition applications.

Ah, the word "politics" sounds ugly. Yet IT managers always talk about the negative role of politics in making IT investment and prioritization decisions. It would seem that "politics" is something to be avoided, that somehow a more rational decision-making approach could avoid politics.

Actuate Corporation has launched a new on-demand business performance management service. "Actuate OnPerformance," as the software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering is called, is based on the Performancesoft Suite, which Actuate acquired when it bought Performancesoft Inc.

I'm a bit of an armchair climber and mountaineer. I don't have much talent or experience, but I'm fascinated by the trials and travails of climbing high mountains like Everest, Annapurna, and others that rise to over 8,000 meters above sea level.

Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur pours buckets of cold water onto the heads of Web 2.0 enthusiasts, accusing them of "worshipping the creative amateur" -- regardless of how poorly educated and inarticulate they may be.

The financial community recently seems to have added a new twist to the advice given in Shakespeare's Henry VI (Part 2) with regard to lawyers in the wake of the US $130-billion-plus write-offs that are increasing daily due to the subprime mortgage debacle.

A few years ago, I wrote about "Applistructure" as the latest trend to combine enterprise infrastructure with enterprise business applications. This was all the buzz at the time. A recent Google search for the term reveals numerous articles from late 2005 by analysts and pundits predicting great things. Then ... nothing. No references for 2006 nor 2007.

While most of us worry about IT's strategic impact (does IT really matter?), events have turned again to require that we worry about IT's cost. There's little doubt that IT does matter in many industries. However, when times get tough, management's attention returns to the issue of cost.

Here's the problem. Generally, we don't understand IT's cost. Many CIOs cannot answer the following simple questions.

What are our five highest-cost applications -- and what does each really cost?