Summer time is when my mind seems to require that I take some time off from thinking about close-in problems and take a really long view. You have to understand that being a realistic futurist is hard work.

During several recent interviews with candidates applying for a project manager position in our company, I ran across a gross misconception about agile software development processes that, in my opinion, requires some explanation.

The requirement for really good security -- where that exists, which is by no means everywhere -- hones right in on the Achilles' heel of governance. After all, what is governance? A set of rules, policies, or principles designed to steer employees in the desired direction: toward right behavior and away from wrong behavior.

For 40 years, businesses have asked, "How can we get more from our investment in technology?" Scholars, gurus, experts, and consultants have responded with some form of "You should first create an architecture." A few pioneers who pursued this advice realized the benefits; most did not.

I know that none of you really want to be here, so I'll try to keep this as short as possible. We shouldn't be more than two ... two-and-a-half hours ... getting through this risk stuff, and if we all just push through, it shouldn't be too painful.

BI proponents -- including vendors, analysts, and consultants (myself included) -- have pushed the idea of ubiquitous BI, or "BI for the masses," for years. To date, however, most companies have found the widespread dissemination of BI practices to their more rank-and-file workers an elusive goal.

On 24 April, I attended a meeting in Washington, DC, USA, titled "Engineering Solutions for Specialty Crop Challenges." The meeting had over 100 attendees, mostly from industry. As part of the agenda for the first day, I gave an overview of my work in modeling agricultural risk.

Last month I reviewed opportunities for IT to partner with the business, with suppliers, and with other organizations, and I described the first of my three keys for partnering: Exchange (see "Three Keys to Sustainable Partnering Across Any Boundary," 31 May 2007).

Last week, the company RC2 Corporation of Oak Brook, Illinois, USA, issued a recall notice and notified the US Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) that it was recalling 1.5 million of its Thomas the Tank Engine wooden railroad toy trains and some of its accessories because the Chinese factory that produced them used lead paint.

In enterprise architecture, we're constantly challenged to overcome perceptions that we're in an "ivory tower" or being impractical or even irrelevant. In response, we should be looking for opportunities to provide value within the enterprise. Luckily, we're well suited with skills and well positioned organizationally to do so if we search out the right opportunities.

How many plans are there? Let us count the ways. There are business plans, project plans, program plans, and production plans. There are marketing plans, sales plans, account plans, and vendor plans. There are strategic plans and tactical plans, game plans, travel plans, and vacation plans. There are business budgets and personal budgets and forecasts.

Significant business processes are being outsourced to other companies, but most organizations do not check to confirm if those companies have documented emergency preparedness and disaster recovery plans in place.

In my previous Advisor in this series (see " Is a Prospective and Promising Passage to India Possible?

Too often we find business organizations (and IT organizations) with strategic plans that are vague and unhelpful. These plans feature high-level strategy statements exemplified by the following: our company strategy is to provide the best-quality and lowest-cost financial services to our customers. Often the company strategy statement is then further developed with bulleted statements such as:

Service improvement: attract, retain, and provide high-quality service to our financial service customers

The results from a Cutter Consortium survey (conducted in March 2007) of 119 end-user organizations (based worldwide) and their data warehousing, BI, and other analysis practices, indicates that end-user organizations are continuing to use data warehousing and BI to analyze supply chain data.

I recently read the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I had read pieces of his earlier book, The Tipping Point , and I also heard him on C-SPAN talking about his new book.

The cover story of the 11 June 2007 issue of Business Week, "3M's Innovation Crisis: How Six Sigma Almost Smothered Its Idea Culture," discusses the great difficulty companies and CEOs have in trying to balance "innovation and efficiency." "While process excellence demands precision

I know that none of you really want to be here, so I'll try to keep this as short as possible. We shouldn't be more than two ... two-and-a-half hours ... getting through this risk stuff, and if we all just push through, it shouldn't be too painful.

The cover story of the 11 June 2007 issue of Business Week, "3M's Innovation Crisis: How Six Sigma Almost Smothered Its Idea Culture," discusses the great difficulty companies and CEOs have in trying to balance "innovation and efficiency." "While process excellence demands precision, consistency, and repetition, innovation calls for variation, failure, and serendipity," the article states.

Two years ago, Sun and its partners introduced the Java Business Integration (JBI) environment (working through the Java Community Process -- or JCP).

Managers can't wait until the IT organization finally disappears. Not that it will go out of existence-- although some managers would be fine with that -- but that organizationally IT will find itself so woven into the fabric of everyday work that it will cease to operate as a clearly defined structure with its own office door upon which a sign hangs, "IT Department: Enter at Your Own Risk."

Application outsourcing is becoming an increasingly common strategy for handling everything from an individual legacy application through end-to-end support of an entire portfolio. Companies turn to outsourcing to cut costs, focus on core competencies, gain guaranteed service performance, free resources, offload undesirable tasks, and/or take advantage of specific expertise offered by the outsourcer.

Eric Clemons was moved to respond at some length to David Lineman's Advisor of 30 May (see "Securing the Long Tail"). Due to the length of his response, we are providing a link to the article rather than sending it out in an e-mail message.

One of the most enduring results of research in information systems has been the degree of discomfort that business executives claim when it comes to making decisions about IS and IT. The great number of acronyms (increasing daily it seems), the pervasiveness of technical language, and the unique blend of skills that are required to understand computing can be very intimidating.

The next time you find yourself struggling to get plans or funding approved to better secure your organization's customer information systems, be sure to point out that data breaches are costly in more ways than one. For real-world proof, you need look no further than the ongoing saga at TJX Companies, Inc.