One of the key tasks in managing IT is managing the relationship between IT and the business. CIOs who are good at relationship management are seen as more effective overall. But what is relationship management? And what can CIOs and other IT managers do to improve relations between business and IT?

Almost everyone has various problems reducing their initial concepts of a step to a suitable size. It is, however, almost invariably possible to do so. Everyone can be taught how to do it. But many highly educated, intelligent, experienced "engineering directors" cannot quite believe this, until they experience it themselves. I believe this is a cultural problem, not a technological problem.

This Advisor is intended primarily for customer and service provider relationship managers who are responsible for managing an outsourcing relationship. Of course, this information is also important for their senior management and their relationship management teams.

To say that data quality is a huge problem is a gigantic understatement. Year after year, our surveys indicate that it continues to be the overwhelming concern among organizations developing data warehousing, BI, customer relationship management (CRM), business performance management, and a host of other information-intensive applications.

The perpetually changing world of IT today is a given. How we buy, deploy, and support business technology is constantly shifting. However, perhaps even more profound changes are taking place in senior management's perception of the value of technology; thus, leadership is on the move as well.

The potential advantages of offshore outsourcing (offshoring) are easy to recognize. But it is not so easy to identify the possible disadvantages. It is imperative that the decision to offshore includes a detailed analysis of the risks and potential problems. I address five of these pitfalls in this week's Advisor.

Has the push for corporate governance and enterprise risk management gone too far? Some think so, and a small but growing backlash against excessive governance and risk management is starting to build.

I have just finished attending a number of events around the world on software development. Many of these events are organized by tool developers such as Microsoft or IBM. Each vendor is trying to tell us that teams will deliver better software if we use a certain set of tools.