[This week I address two issues. In the first part, I consider what makes up customer relationship management (CRM). Second, I offer a correction to last week's article that covered the new Oracle BI Suite offerings.]

My last two Trends Advisors in this series (see "Real Enterprise Data Architecture, Parts 1 and 2," 23 February and 9 March 2006) have focused on what I refer to as real enterprise data architecture, which in enterprise architecture terms is equivalent to distinguishing the forests from the trees in the enterprise data space.

Increasingly, governance risk is becoming the "fifth risk" that corporations must include in their enterprise risk management (ERM) portfolio that already includes strategic, operational, financial, and insurable risks. The move to couple risk management and governance can be seen clearly in the COSO Enterprise Risk Management -- Integrated Framework [1].

Shortly after reading Agile Project Management Practice Director Jim Highsmith's recent Advisor about whether iterations must be short to be agile ("Agile Isn't Short Iterations," 23 February 2006), I watched a video with my family called "The Wright Stuff" about the Wright brothers' clearly agile project leadership in development of the flying machine (www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wright/).

By now you have most likely heard of or been exposed to the lo-tech agile practice of using 3x5 cards to capture user stories, plan development, and track an agile project. Needless to say, this technique has terrified more than a few development managers and leaders and in many cases the strengths associated with agile development have been thrown out along with the "crazy" idea of using index cards for requirements.

It is sometimes very useful to go out to a customer's office and sit in a cubicle right in the heart of the action. You get a very real perspective on the dynamics of the organization. It is a feeling unlike those you are spoon-fed in meetings. You learn the real problems, and the real problem solvers. I recently undertook an assignment and wound up at a very nice desk, right outside the room with the coffee pot. Fascinating.

Managing core competencies is much more difficult than simply outsourcing those areas that have proved troublesome to manage. Managing core competencies involves taking a very long view of an enterprise's strategic interests, especially its key knowledge areas. Nowhere is that more in play than in the area of IT.

In my last Advisor ("EA Maturity Models," 15 March 2006), I introduced a variety of different models that are being used to evaluate enterprise architecture programs. Just like many EA programs that unfortunately go down the "EA for EA sake" path, we often take a "maturity for maturity sake" approach, forgetting that the maturity model is there for a purpose.

In our last Advisor, we began a discussion of the benefits of employing properly crafted dashboards to provide transparency into every aspect of IT's business (see "Dashboards Are Critical for IT Management -- A Lot of Dashboards, Part 1," 22 March 2006). "Manage IT like a business" is a recent mantra. Dashboards provide the means.

At last Windows Vista (the operating system formerly known as Longhorn) has reached beta, and Microsoft is confident that the client version will enter production by the end of 2006. However, the server (which for some reason is still called Longhorn) will not be generally available until 2007.

Last week, Oracle introduced Oracle BI Suite. This offering -- or rather, line of different offerings -- is significant because it blends Oracle's own BI technology (e.g., Oracle Discover, Oracle Reports, OLAP) with Siebel's BI and analytics technology, which Oracle gained when it acquired Siebel Systems last year.

Reputation is a major corporate asset that is often valued much more than the tangible assets of the corporation itself. Buying a corporation's reputation is as important a consideration as buying its assets. When Phillip Morris bought Kraft Foods for US $13.1 billion, it wanted Kraft's reputation and was willing to pay four times Kraft's physical assets to get it.

Boards of directors have a lot of committees: compensation committees, audit committees, M&A committees, among others. But what about IT? Are there committees that focus squarely on the acquisition, deployment, and support of IT? Most companies do not segment IT as a unique activity. Perhaps this means that they see technology as more tactical than strategic. Perhaps they don't have enough expertise to actually staff a technology committee.

Anyone running a complex business requires regular information about key operational, sales, and financial matters. A CEO we know remarked, "If you don't have the right data, how can you manage the place?" Otherwise, you're relying on luck and momentum.

Those who have been involved in litigious disputes over failed computer software projects and/or contracts readily agree that, whatever their size in terms of the financial amounts at stake, whatever the facts and circumstances of the contract between the parties, and whatever the conduct of the software development project, software construction and implementation cases present complex, interwoven technical and legal issues -- and therefore prove very costly and time consuming to unravel.

Last month, I covered the "blending" of business rules management (BRM) and business process management (BPM) technologies (see "Business Rules and Business Process Management: Separate But Complementary," 22 February 2006). This month, I want to discuss the use of BRM applications for multichannel decision automation.

Any doubt about where the market for business intelligence (BI) and data management is heading was shattered by IBM's recent announcement that it is launching a company-wide initiative that will invest US $1 billion over the next three years to expand its information management software and services offerings.

Over the past year, I've noticed increasing attention being directed at the use of text mining to enhance customer relationship management (CRM), knowledge management (KM), enterprise information portals (EIP), and other applications by automating the analysis, categorization, indexing, summarization, and association of high volumes of text-based information.

Senior managers -- the people who make strategic product decisions -- need to know when they can expect those products to release. The organization of current product releases against a timeline is a project portfolio. And, planning the project portfolio in an agile environment is different -- but not harder -- than planning the project portfolio in a non-agile environment.

"Omigod, what happened to you?" asked my friend Jenny when we saw each other after dropping off our 4th-graders at school this week. My shoulder was heavily bound with a most impressive arm sling. It was throbbing like crazy, but the attention that my fancy sling garners me everywhere in town is almost worth it.

The concept of an independent organizational risk office has an amazing appeal. If we just open a risk office, they'll be able to channel the practice in the proper direction and get everyone on board. The allure of consistency, common understanding, and professional vision is almost too tempting to resist. This is a call to resist it.

GM's recent decision to initiate a "multisourcing" strategy that will result in it parceling out its IT outsourcing responsibilities to multiple solution providers has gained a lot of attention within the IT industry, as well as among corporate management and business publications.

Maybe I've been in the IT industry too long, but I don't get what all the commotion is about.

Some people compare opinions to body parts; everybody has them. Perhaps the same could be said about capability maturity models (CMM), which seem to have sprung up like weeds. Maturity models were first pioneered by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI, a federally funded research organization associated with Carnegie Mellon University) in the early 1990s as a way to quantify software engineering practices and provide comparisons among organizations.

Due diligence is the formal term for the process by which we screen and select options. Due diligence is organized around a set of constant criteria that can be applied to technology investment decisions of all kinds. The lenses used to vet investment opportunities and challenges are organized around the specific requirements that CIOs, venture capitalists (VCs), and technology vendors need to satisfy to achieve their objectives.