There's managing the project, then there is managing the project with the future in mind. By that I don't mean, "What can I up sell to the client to make him come back for another project?" We should already be doing that to some degree, though trying not be too obvious about it. Our organizations are already looking to us as salespeople: looking for change orders, suggesting areas where other products or capabilities of our companies can help the project customer out. If you are a consultant like me, you are likely doing this all the time -- probably even in your sleep.

Business architecture confronts head-on the issue of business and technology strategic alignment and takes the proverbial bull by its horns.

Digital business requires change across a very wide range of areas. There is an increasing use of storage, vastly expanded networking requirements, and a rise in the virtualization of all equipment. Digital systems deployed on the network can be replicated, modeled, and situated anywhere, so we have seen virtual networks, virtual servers, virtual mobile solutions, and virtual workstations of all types.

Smart clothing utilizes textile sensors embedded directly within their fabrics. This allows such garments to function as biometric data-gathering devices. Examples include shirts, sports bras, gloves, smart socks, and shoes that can capture and relay information from the wearer -- such as heart rate, perspiration, respiration, grip, running form, fitness levels, and more. The data is typically transmitted wirelessly to a smartphone to provide direct feedback to the wearer, and to a cloud platform for applying machine learning (ML) and other analytics in order to generate behavioral feedback.

Recently, there was a significant "news buzz" when Chris Roberts, a computer security researcher, was removed from an airplane after tweeting comments about the ability to access "critical" aircraft data via an underseat passenger connection available at each seat. These connections were intended to allow passengers to access the Internet and other harmless flight information. But Roberts, being a security expert, says that he has been able to access functions, like deploying the oxygen masks that might panic passengers and endanger a flight.

Development and operations groups play equally important roles and must synchronize their work to enable organizations to rapidly produce software products and services. The awareness of this has resulted in the development of the operating principles known as "DevOps."

Enterprises, under constant pressure to marshal finite resources, are understandably selective about investments, and must choose wisely between candidate investments with different rewards and unequal risk profiles. This Advisor starts from the position that architecture too should be viewed as an organizational investment, and responsibly managed as one. To be able to do that effectively, we need to get our arms around the value of architecture.

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Cutter Senior Consultant San Murugesan's introduction to the May 2015 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Software Infrastructure Management Strategies" (Vol. 28, No. 5). Learn more about Cutter IT Journal.]

I know of several projects under way utilizing sensors, analytics, and mobile technologies to optimize rail operations by collecting and analyzing operational data to determine real-time vehicle location and operating factors such as average acceleration, speed, idle times, number of stops, driver performance, and so on, and to assess KPIs on equipment wear and rail/roadbed conditions.

"Commodity" is a bad word among technologists. It implies standardized, unchanging, noninnovative, boring, and cheap. Commodities are misunderstood. This Advisor seeks to dispel some of the myths around the commoditization of IT services (i.e., the cloud).

Our goal on projects as the project manager should be to remain as productive as possible and use resource time and effort as wisely as possible. That way we accomplish tasks, we get work done, we don't waste time, and we go easier on the project budget. One way to help ensure productivity and budget management is to make our project meetings as productive as possible.

Much of our struggle with unsatisfied information needs finds its root cause in imperfect information system design, and particularly in poorly designed conceptual models.

Every software professional has an interest in technology adoption. In the short term, technology vendors want to sell their products and services; in the long term, they want to retain their customers and expand their success. IT departments want to contribute to the success of their organizations, to whatever extent that software can help, and maintain a good relationship with their customers, both internal and external. Adoption, however, is not something that software professionals can control in even the most hierarchical organizations. Therefore, their success depends on an important form of contextual knowledge: the patterns and anti-patterns of technology adoption among their customers.

Watson Analytics provides immediate analytic processing from the cloud for business-related queries. The most interesting aspect, however, is not in its application of big data to the solution of queries -- a process that is handled by IBM's Cognos TM1 as a back end -- but in its application in simplifying the user interface and making analytics accessible to a wider range of business professionals.

The quest for knowledge has played a major part in the intellectual development and evolution of individuals, societies, and cultures. Socrates viewed knowledge as a virtue, a path to perfection. Prometheus was punished for bringing knowledge to the world, and Faust for wanting it too much.

Yet knowledge has continued to feature as a defining commodity and a sign of progress. Aristotle, reflecting the height of Greek philosophy, observed that "all men by nature desire knowledge," while Socrates proclaimed that the only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

Containerization gives an organization more than just a reduction in redundancy by eliminating resource-hogging services that do not need to be replicated. 

This Advisor explores some of the exhibits highlighted at Internet of Things World 2015, such as Intel's interactive model of a smart city, Samsung's Artik hardware-software modules for IoT devices, and Microsoft's Azure IoT Suite.

Selling is neither a formula nor magic. It is a psychological process between people in which you deploy your skills to move through the process, hopefully toward a conclusion that meets your interests. There are numerous skills used during the sales process: the practice of planning your conversation ahead of time; the ability to manage your emotions in real time; the desire to generate creative solutions in the face of adversity; and, most importantly, your communication skills. Communication skills consist of two parts: listening and talking.

Hadoop can store and process huge amounts of social media and other unstructured data practically and cost effectively -- making it possible for organizations to perform analyses multiple times over in order to measure changing consumer or public opinion over time (e.g., comparing several months or years worth of findings).

Change is risky. The decision to change or not change needs to be based on a risk-versus-reward analysis supported by executive sponsors. Some change will occur based on necessity. Many IT organizations are adopting DevOps practices bottom-up because the burden of delivering and the overhead for maintaining current systems is affecting their physiological and psychological well-being. However, businesses should view this as a leading indicator of the need for further change.

The long-time hiring vs. training debate has been energized by an influx of new technologies requiring new skills. Today's IT departments constantly struggle to meet the skill and experience requirements of new projects, new development platforms, new languages, new environments, and new infrastructure. The advantages of hiring are that it makes it possible to immediately bring in new skills and new perspectives -- often from people who have some familiarity with the industry and may have worked with competitors. This is offset by a range of serious disadvantages.

Shadow IT is symptomatic of how enterprises really operate. There are processes, systems, and structures that are visible on the surface, and these work well for the most part. However, there are activities, investments, people, and decisions that are outside of the well-delineated boundaries of an organizational function.

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Charalampos Patrikakis's introduction to the April 2015 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Next-Generation Production Management" (Vol. 28, No. 4). Learn more about Cutter IT Journal.]

There is a simple principle that would keep us from making grievous errors due to incomplete (or worse, inaccurate) data. Make "data-informed decisions" instead of the more common catchphrase of "data-driven decisions." The difference is an extremely important nuance.

In some companies, leaders may have a hard time participating in conversations because of how they feel they are influencing the conversation. When they speak, people will tend to go along with them, so they find themselves speaking last to allow everyone else to speak; ironically, this also gives them the last word.