On 16 December 2007, USA Today published an article on "CEO's bold experiment: Management by Democracy" and provided a commentary of Q&A sessions with HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayar. The article is about the creation of workplaces using democracy and how corporate management leverages employees for the governance of business. I really enjoyed reading the excerpts of the interview.

Many IT managers are seeking to reliably forecast and estimate projects.

Last week, Sun Microsystems announced it would buy leading open source database developer MySQL for approximately US $1 billion. This deal did not receive as much attention as it should have because it happened at the same time Oracle announced it would buy BEA Systems. Nevertheless, it is important.

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

If you get a chance, you ought to tune in to Cutter Senior Consultant Michael Mah's Cutter Webinar titled "Case Study: The Impact of Agile on Productivity at Five Companies." [This morning, January 17, at 11:30 EST -- you can still register now or watch the recording at a later date.] I've been working with

As Sarbanes-Oxley commands management awareness and efficacy, organizations are looking for systems that will make sure they are working in the best interests of their shareholders. One system that is taking hold both in the private and public sector (after more than 40 years of application) is the earned value management system (EVMS).

For the past few years, I've started out the new year of Advisors with some suggestions for resolutions. To continue with this popular feature and as a service to Enterprise Architecture Advisor readers, here again is a list of ready-made resolutions that you can adopt for 2008.

In my last Advisor (see "Principles of Planning, Part 6: When and How?" 26 December 2007), I introduced the topic of effective communication and its importance as a critical factor for successful implementation of business initiatives. In this Advisor, I'll dive a little deeper into this topic.

Vendors have been offering on-demand BI and other analytic and data management solutions since 2000, though at that time they were typically referred to as analytic or business intelligence ASPs. Many of these pioneers focused on offering hosted applications and services for analyzing data associated with e-commerce companies.

We have advanced the practice of managing IT projects in the past handful of decades. Understanding the origin of the advances can help pass them along to new project managers.

In the last year or two, I've become very interested in cyberflexing. Because I'm a member of a National Academy of Sciences study (in progress) on the subject of "Ethical and Political Implications of Offensive Information Operations," I must mention that what I'm saying here are personal opinions on many of the issues and not conclusions of the study group.

Last week, Microsoft announced plans to acquire enterprise search software specialist Fast Search and Transfer (FAST) for 6.6 billion Norwegian Kroners, or approximately US $1.2 billion. This deal is important because it gives Microsoft high-end, cutting-edge search technology it can use to bolster its low- and medium-end search products.

If you do agile planning, you probably use the "yesterday's weather" metaphor of Extreme Programming: your team collects the backlog of stories or features, sorts them by priority, and estimates them -- let's say, using story points. Then you take the "velocity" -- the sum of story points finished during the last iteration(s).

The Web has not yet reached its full potential; it's a moving post.

collaboration = innovation

After listening, naturally comes talking. (Alas, it's all too often the other way around.) Collaboration requires four broad categories of talking. I'll take up two of them today, two more next time.

As we all know, enterprise architecture (EA) is not a technical affair; it is not just for the technologists and architects to demonstrate the technical marvels in developing IT solutions or services for the business world. Instead, EA is now the widely regarded conduit for developing a collaborative environment for both business and IT.

We engaged a client's business executive team members this week in an extended conversation about their priorities and plans for IT. The discussion focused on their key issue: how to think about their need for ongoing IT investments, meaning maintenance and support of their application portfolio.

India is one of the powerhouse countries of this century -- of that there can be little doubt. Its huge and diverse population is a growing opportunity, and the country''s highly skilled, business-savvy workforce makes it an attractive business partner. As companies increasingly beat a well-trodden path to India's shores, many are finding that doing business in India is not as simple as signing contracts and producing products.

Faced with more opportunities for the use of technology than there are resources available for their simultaneous development, organizations are faced with the task of prioritizing or ranking opportunities. Often organizations use a single ranking factor, such as ROI (return on investment).

Because customer data breaches continue to make headlines almost every week, it seems appropriate to ask how much of a financial hit an organization should expect to take should it suffer such an incident.

Happy New Year! I wish everyone a terrific 2008. May you realize success in all your projects and endeavors.

Last week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) complied with a US congressional request that the space agency release the findings from a four-year airline-safety study it conducted involving thousands of interviews -- including those with 24,000 pilots. The trouble is, NASA released the information in a format that makes it all but impossible to analyze further.

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

If agile methods are to go mainstream, it might be when their popularity and legitimacy reach a tipping point.

As we begin 2008, I thought it would be useful to review a couple of stories from last year that might provide some added motivation for those of you resolving that this is the year you're going to get your organization to take enterprise risk management seriously.