A wise philosopher once said that the limits of language reflect the limits of our understanding. That is, if we can't assign words to a phenomenon, then we don't truly understand it. A similar situation exists in the discipline of information security and risk management: assigning inexact words means we can't truly manage it. Terms to describe specific phenomena in this discipline are used loosely or interchangeably with others. Out of a kind of verbal promiscuity, confusion is sewn.

It stands to reason that an organization embarking on a business process offshoring initiative would have a complete understanding of how the processes it is actually offshoring work. Surprisingly, you would be wrong to assume that this is the case.

As enterprise architecture (EA) programs mature, I'm seeing a shift in focus toward business architecture. This is something that I see both with my own clients as well as across the industry. For example, one client that has a relatively mature EA program is building expertise and adding more head count in business architects.

It's that time of year again, when we all look ahead to the coming year. Aside from the fact that this has again come much too quickly (didn't we just solve Y2K?), it is interesting to speculate on the important issues that will come onto the CIO's agenda in 2007.

Over the past 10 years, almost all companies in the IT industry have either been exposed to or have experienced one or more industry mandates, government regulations, or corporate policies. So you may think that IT practitioners must be familiar and well informed in the relevant challenges and issues of compliance, right? Think again!

My new smart, stylish, cool PDA is a pain in the neck to actually use. There are so many features embedded in so many more -- these people have perfected hierarchical menus to everywhere -- that I find it nearly impossible to optimize its performance. There are also way too many decisions for me to make: do I really need 50 ring/vibrate combinations (not to mention the six-gazillion I can download)?

In response to last week's Advisor on important BI and data warehousing trends for 2007 (see "BI Trends and Developments to Watch for in 2007," 2 January 2007), one reader inquired as to my thoughts on grid computing architectures, in general, as well as the use of grids for data warehousing and BI.

The world of the blogosphere, based on the key elements of the Web and the machinery of blogs, is a rich and intensely social place. While broadcast media is based on a one-to-many dynamic, where the organization publishing pushes "content" to an "audience," the user experience of reading blogs is many to many, much more like hanging out at a noisy dinner party than watching television.

The world of the blogosphere, based on the key elements of the Web and the machinery of blogs, is a rich and intensely social place. While broadcast media is based on a one-to-many dynamic, where the organization publishing pushes "content" to an "audience," the user experience of reading blogs is many to many, much more like hanging out at a noisy dinner party than watching television.

Professional teams practice over and over again to make the transition from raw talent to finely honed, instinctive skill. They practice to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both individual players and the team as a whole. They practice so that the plays in the playbook become second nature. Finally, they practice to make the transition from a collection of individual athletes to a real team. Beyond that, individual players do extensive strength and speed training on their own to meet explicit or implicit performance expectations from the coaches.

The applicability and utility of any efforts to build a risk infrastructure ultimately rely on the development of a risk history. Organizations cannot ensure consistency of practice without awareness of what happened in the past, and for some, a component of the organization''s culture is stories -- that is, its history. Some organizations can cite past acts of heroism and survival.

In a previous Advisor, we saw how organizations can approach vendor selection by first thinking about the outcomes the company seeks in the offshoring relationship ("Vendor Selection Based on Desired Outcomes," 6 December 2006). Once that is accomplished, it is easy to establish specific criteria to help in the winnowing out process. In this Advisor, we apply the concepts of the previous Advisor to the creation of specific criteria for offshoring vendor selection.

In 2006, I started out the year's Advisors with some suggestions for New Year's resolutions. I know how busy things can get around this time of the year, so in keeping with this popular feature and as a continuing service to Enterprise Architecture Advisor readers, here again is a list of ready-made resolutions that you can adopt for 2007.

In his 19 December 2006 Business Intelligence E-Mail Advisor, "Business Performance Management Demands Data Profiling," Cutter Senior Consultant Curt Hall recommends organizations perform a data quality audit of their operational systems prior to conducting a business performance management initiative.

The IT industry today bears little resemblance to the industry of more than four decades ago when I started out in software development. In those early days, the concept of computers actually "communicating" with each other didn't exist.

"What did you know, and when did you know it?"

That query was the signature phrase from the Watergate hearings some 30 years ago in the US, which was looking into illegal activities conducted by the Nixon Whitehouse. It was resurrected during the recent HP boardroom leak flap about who knew what when regarding HP investigators illegally pre-texting corporate board members'' and reporters' identities to uncover personal information about them.

Happy New Year! I want to wish everyone a terrific 2007.

Last week, news articles in the New York Times and elsewhere documented the difficulties that the US Coast Guard was having with a program called "Deepwater" -- a US $24-billion program to rebuild the Coast Guard's fleet of aging vessels. But things have gone south.

All agile methodologies call for high levels of interaction between the development group and the customer or product group (internal IT groups will probably refer to this as the customer team, while software product companies may refer to it as the product team). Both groups are part of the overall project team.

Many corporations' boards and senior management do not believe that the CIO should be concerned with corporate governance. This is a grave blunder, and I pity the CIO and the shareholders of any corporation with this attitude.

One of the popular ideas aimed at increasing the business value of IT outsourcing is the shared risk and return agreement, in which the outsourcer is rewarded for generating additional client benefits. Like many management concepts, this type of arrangement has been less successful than most organizations, and consultants, would like to admit.

Service-oriented architectures (SOA) have moved beyond the hype stage to where organizations are now carrying out their implementation plans. Their goal: increased agility via the ability to configure composite applications -- implemented in the form of services -- in response to changing business conditions and IT requirements. To help make this goal a reality, business rules management systems (BRMSs) are increasingly becoming a part of organizations' SOA implementation plans. Here's why.

collaboration = innovation

About 100 years ago, when I was teaching rhetoric and public address in our nation's colleges and universities, I happened to learn that the maximum normal attention span for an adult human being was in the 12- to 15-second range. That's right. Nobody does better than that.

Project management is a discipline and, like all disciplines, needs to be applied judiciously. Over the past few years, we've seen PMOs and project managers run the discipline gamut: some PMOs are composed of overzealous professionals who sometimes lose sight of their primary mission; and some professionals barely apply project management discipline, working only to very loosely consult on the project management process.

So what are the options? What makes sense -- and what doesn't?

We are constantly amazed at the number of our clients who are strongly focused on cutting IT costs. Just this week, a large financial services organization asked us for assistance in cutting its IT budget. Yet this same organization continues to grow and to demand more IT services.