Enterprise architecture (EA) has always been one of many terms with overloaded meaning. To some of us, EA is about "organizing multiple applications in an enterprise into a coherent whole" [1]. This view points out the difference between architecting an individual application versus architecting a collection of applications that support a business unit or an entire organization. It is not unlike comparing architecting a single building to working on an entire city plan.

The only eternal truths are death, taxes, and change. Companies should know this. They experience change often. Ask Kodak, as it dies ever so slowly due to the profound change in technology that is influencing consumer preferences in the photography universe.

The only eternal truths are death, taxes, and change. Companies should know this. They experience change often. Ask Kodak, as it dies ever so slowly due to the profound change in technology that is influencing consumer preferences in the photography universe.

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.

Back in 2002, when I wrote the Executive Report "Transitioning Business Application Components to Web Services" for Cutter Consortium's Enterprise Architecture advisory service, I described service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a next big thing. Little did I know then, like many other practitioners, that we would experience such an industry-wide push to use SOA today. I can report today that SOA is here and it is here to stay.

One bit of news that seems to have slipped in under the radar screen is Informatica Corporation's announcement that it is buying unstructured and semi-structured data integration vendor Itemfield for US $55 million in cash. With this acquisition, Informatica now has the technology to transform its flagship PowerCenter product into a "universal data integration platform" that can handle structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data integration and transformation. From a market perspective, this is important.

All of the benefits that arise from a company adopting social media as a means to better communicate with customers, partners, and, yes, even competitors hold true within the firm, inside the firewall. A business is a network of conversations within the firewall, and providing blogs as a way for people to better conduct those conversations can be a great way to support or foster them.

There seems to be a bit of confusion within the agile community about the concept of self-organization. To some it seems to be a euphemism for anarchy and an excuse to rail against management in general and project management in particular. I think this "anti-management" faction helps critics relegate agile to a "small-project, fringe" movement, which is unfortunate. Self-organizing isn't about anarchy or lack of leadership, it's about empowerment (or in the old school, delegation) and style of leadership.

Time Magazine published a very interesting cover story this week that those who have a keen interest in information security and risk management would do well to read. It is entitled, "How Americans Are Living Dangerously." Its chief argument is that people dwell on remote risks and spend less time mitigating risks in their lives that have a much higher chance of occurring. Is this your organization?

Most sourcing projects (IT-based) that I have worked with can be classified under two categories: professional services and enterprise or organizational solutions -- based on their contractual agreements for delivering results. While presenting the principles, I would like to distinguish the activities that are different for each type of sourcing.

The discussion recently came up about the role of an architect and whether or not they should write code as part of a project team. This became a somewhat heated discussion with a lot of strong opinions, but I think it ultimately comes down to the typical consultant's answer: "It depends." It depends on what you mean by an "architect" and what you expect the architect to accomplish.

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.

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. My definition of a "personal computer" was when I was the only user operating a mainframe at night, debugging my program (which was written on punched cards -- oh yes, "don't drop the card deck!").

A question I seem to be asked with increasing frequency by readers and other people I meet at meetings and conferences concerns whether I think that open source BI is catching on with companies. My answer is that open source BI is definitely catching on.

"The map is not the territory."

-- Marshall McMullen

One of the basic assumptions of agile development is that design and -- to a certain extent -- architecture evolve over time. The key difference between a piece of completely entangled software that has been maintained to death and software that has grown in an agile manner is refactoring, the art of improving the design of an existing system without changing its functionality.

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."

"With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the US market."

"We can close the books on infectious diseases."

The three above predictions were made respectively by Albert Einstein in 1932, in a Business Week article in 1968, and by the US Surgeon General William H. Stewart in 1969.

In Nicholas Carr's famous 2003 piece in Harvard Business Review with the provocative title: "IT Doesn't Matter," [1] Carr asserts that technology's strategic impact has run its course, and the technology playing field is now level.

Last month, I discussed the concepts underlying Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 (see "Enterprise 2.0: Hip or Hype?" 25 October 2006). Basically, I said that Web 2.0 involves the use of second-generation Web technologies (e.g., blogs, wikis, social networks, instant messaging, RSS, video conferencing, pod casting) in an open manner to allow consumers to communicate with each other, to form groups or communities consisting of members with similar interests, and to share ideas and collaborate on content.

collaboration = innovation

One of the strongest community-building tools available to the coach is the retrospective. Retrospectives happen at different times during agile projects. The reflection (a short retrospective) happens at the end of each iteration. Typically taking about an hour, the reflection is time for the community to process the iteration. The retrospective, a bit more formal and longer lasting, typically covers more time -- possibly weeks or months. In each case, the following are discussed:

In February, I discussed the convergence of the "two BPMs": business PROCESS management (BPM) and business PERFORMANCE management (see "Merging the Two BPMs: Opportunities Abound," 21 February 2006).

Last month, I provided an update on text mining and analysis technology (see "Text Mining Update," 24 October 2006). Basically, I said that over the past year or so, I've noticed increasing attention directed at the use of text mining for automating the analysis, categorization, indexing, summarization, and association of high volumes of text-based (i.e., unstructured and semi-structured) information for business applications.

Recently, my local state highway department put off a US $150-million project because, during a site mapping study, the state engineers discovered a layer of shale under a significant portion of the planned route. Now, building a stable roadway over a large segment of unstable shale is a very expensive and difficult process, so the highway department quietly postponed the project for a couple of years until a better route could be found or more extensive engineering studies could be completed. This was not a popular decision, but it was good engineering.