A reader wrote to me this week to inquire about data profiling and auditing tools. And lately, I've noticed an increasing interest in data profiling in the media. Consequently, I decided to make data profiling and auditing tools the topic of this week's Advisor.

[Excerpted from an article titled "Understanding the Roots of Process Performance Failure," originally published in CrossTalk and authored by Robert Charette, Laura Dwinnell, and John McGarry.]

That businesses want IT investments to be firmly rooted in business strategy is a given. And there is plentiful advice available on how to align investments with strategies. But what new IT investments to consider? How are the potential investments identified and validated?

That businesses want IT investments to be firmly rooted in business strategy is a given. And there is plentiful advice available on how to align investments with strategies. But what new IT investments to consider? How are the potential investments identified and validated?

A survey Cutter Consortium conducted in November 2004 of 110 end-user organizations based worldwide reveals that companies are struggling to sufficiently plan for the end-user training requirements of their business performance management applications.

Agile is becoming more widely accepted. Over the past six months, a number of large organizations have contacted me for help implementing Scrum within their enterprise. This has led me to ponder what a top-down implementation might look like.

While much of the business community is focused on the mega mergers between telecommunications carriers such as SBC and AT&T or the tumultuous acquisition of PeopleSoft by Oracle, a far smaller but potentially more significant acquisition by IBM Corporation of Corio Inc. could serve as a real indicator of the future direction of IT.

IT departments, like any business, are constantly being asked to excel in three dimensions simultaneously: quality of services, operational efficiency, and customer care. When you think about it, isn't that all there is? But you know what? It can't be done: you can't excel in all three at once. If you try, you won't be consistently outstanding at any one, let alone all three, and you'll just wind up in the "muddled middle."