Everyone is aware that the past two years haven't been the best of times for companies or IT vendors. The economy has been in recession, and is only slowly starting to recover. Most companies have cut back spending, laid people off, and hunkered down to wait for better times.

An interview with Alistair Cockburn, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

Q. Tell me about the last interesting consulting engagement you were involved in.

One of the many questions Cutter Consortium seeks to answer with our frequent surveys we conduct is the extent to which organizations are applying various technologies to support their data warehousing and BI initiatives. A question that has peaked my interest lately is the percentage of companies that are currently using broadcast servers for automated alerting and event broadcasting.

The question is not if, but when. Don't question if you will need a computer security strategy; determine when the situation will arise showing you need one. Hackers, criminals, naive users, accidents, tired employees, acts of nature -- all of these can cause serious damage to IT systems and data. Failing to address security can lead to unnecessary risk and expense.

In the mid- to late 1990s, time pressure on software projects accelerated dramatically under the "Internet speed" mantra. It seemed that our industry was hell-bent on bending reality with regard to time, and chants to "build it faster" were the norm.

The answer is pretty clear. To minimize burnout, upper management, the project manager, and project leaders should focus on the following actions (none of which require extra money, promotion, or other traditional rewards):

There have been times in my career as an IT manager when I felt my primary role was to motivate people. I wanted to bring out the best in them because people are the fundamental resource in IT. Their imagination and energy make everything work. Sometimes my attempts at motivating people seemed to work well, and sometimes it was a disaster.

Results from our latest survey analyzing corporate data warehousing and BI trends show that fewer companies plan to increase spending on their data warehousing and BI efforts in 2003 than those that indicated they planned to do so just nine months ago.

About a year ago, after I attended the 2002 Unisys financial analysts conference, I wrote about Unisys' plans to use the Object Management Group's (OMG) Model Driven Architecture (MDA) in application development and business process outsourcing. I just got back from the 2003 version of the conference and can report that Unisys has made great progress and is gearing up for a major push.

In consulting arrangements, there is nothing more challenging than developing a project estimate that both the client and vendor can work from. Yet there is really not much that is more important to achieve. A recent situation I faced sheds some light on the challenges this can bring.

I recently stumbled across something in the opinion section of one of the major computer trade magazines. The author was trying to explain why neither object nor component reuse had quite lived up to expectations. Object (component-based) development has always been sold on the following assumptions:

I recently stumbled across something in the opinion section of one of the major computer trade magazines. The author was trying to explain why neither object nor component reuse had quite lived up to expectations. Object (component-based) development has always been sold on the following assumptions:

What is the purpose of alignment in an outsourcing engagement? At the highest level, it means ensuring that the strategies pursued by the outsourcing engagement are in line with corporate goals. At the lowest level, it means making sure that the right tasks are performed, at the right time, in the right order of priority.