Trying to achieve effective business-IT alignment is inherently a risky activity. It implies the undertaking of important decisions, under conditions of uncertainty. Typically, alignment decisions have long-term impacts, they are difficult to undo, and we are never sure whether they will produce the desired outcome. This scenario of uncertainty applies whether we're deciding on a radical change to our IT infrastructure or on a gradual change to our business processes.

Those who know something of my career in computing know that I started as a technology analyst covering the artificial intelligence (AI) market in the early 1980s. More specifically, I wrote Cutter Information Corp.'s Expert Systems Strategies newsletter for almost 10 years.

There's an amazingly overlooked iceberg of problems in end-user computing. Spreadsheets are developed by people who are very skilled in their main job function, be it finance, procurement, or production planning, but often have had no formal training in spreadsheet use. IT auditors focus on mainstream information systems but regard spreadsheets as user problems, outside their concerns.

In November 1999, the Public Accounts Committee of the British House of Commons published a report entitled "Improving the Delivery of Government IT Projects." It draws lessons from 25 cases from the 1990s where the implementation of IT systems resulted in "delay, confusion, and inconvenience to the citizen and, in many cases, poor value for money to the taxpayer." The Committee warned that, if those lessons go un

In last week's Architecture/e-Business E-Mail Advisor, I discussed the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and the fact that most companies are using CORBA mixed with some other technology, like Java and Enterprise JavaBeans. At the same time, I suggested that the Object Management Group (OMG) was increasingly focused on standards derived from other OMG specifications, especially UML, MOF, and XMI.

There is renewed interest in development of systems that are able to survive attacks, accidents, and failures, while maintaining the ability to provide users with essential services [1]. Such systems require new approaches during various lifecycle activities. We find that a spiral model, modified to highlight survivability considerations, is one way to approach systems development so as to gain survivability [2].

Beginning in about March of this year, you could almost hear the collective sighs of relief from managers of established (i.e., pre-Web) companies. Before that, it had begun to seem that the rules of the business game were different for "e-firms" than they were for others. Great sums of money were being thrown at any new business idea that involved a Web site.

The Object Management Group (OMG) was established in the late 1980s to coordinate the work of a number of companies that wanted to develop standards for object-oriented (OO) development. After some discussion, the group agreed to focus first on the problem of facilitating communications between different OO languages. To do this, it developed CORBA -- the Common Object Request Broker Architecture.

Don't I wish I could knock out a snappy 25-words-or-less definition of what is or is not "privacy"? No such luck.

When was the last time anyone came to the IT department and said, "I want you to solve a problem for me. It's a rather parochial problem, and its solution will not measurably improve our ability to achieve our vision, but I'd like you to do it anyway"? The answer is, of course, never.

A recent report published by TrendWatch suggested that the average age of Web designers/developers is 30 years of age and that the individuals are hired right out of college. One has to be careful with averages, of course. The statistic might mean that half of the designers were 20 and that the other half were 40.

Just a few short months ago, it was quite possible to bring a nifty dot-com idea before the marketplace and have hoards of investors willing to fling money at it. Nevermind that the idea was untested and, incidentally, had never made any money, nor had much prospect of doing so.