The past week has seen unprecedented leaks about the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the way it monitors the world's electronic information. The primary whistleblower has identified himself; he is Edward Snowden, who has been an NSA contractor through Booz Allen Hamilton and a former CIA technical employee.

There's a fundamental problem between the IT profession and its customers: there's an abundance of focus on the cost of the technology (the "T"), yet a dearth of focus on the value of the information (the "I") side of the equation.

Efficiency has been the mantra of systems approaches from early work on time and motion, through the business process reengineering movement, to the latest manifestation in Six Sigma. The organization has been seen as a machine or manufacturing process to be managed through the definition and measurement of defined outcomes. In consequence, method and tools have imitated the manufacturing process: defining output, managing process, monitoring for deviation.

Ever since I began teaching IT at the university (in 1966, actually), I have wondered how best to prepare students for a professional life in computing. Of course, we called the field various things at different times and in different academic contexts: data processing, management-information-systems, computer information systems, computer science.

Efficiency has been the mantra of systems approaches from early work on time and motion, through the business process reengineering movement, to the latest manifestation in Six Sigma. The organization has been seen as a machine or manufacturing process to be managed through the definition and measurement of defined outcomes. In consequence, method and tools have imitated the manufacturing process: defining output, managing process, monitoring for deviation.

Every year I review a few books for my email Advisors. Usually, I can do this fairly quickly, in a week or two, but the most recent book took much longer. Not just because I have been busy, but because you just can't rush through this material.

The roller coaster of business cycles appears to be headed up and accelerating. The economy is recovering, companies are beginning to hire, the real estate market is improving, and even new housing starts are up.

For years, the major BI vendors (e.g., IBM-Cognos, Oracle, SAP Business Objects, SAS, and Microstrategy) have offered components that add mobile capabilities to their BI platforms, business performance management, and other analytic products.

Mobile devices have become one of the most important platforms for the distribution and utilization of user-oriented software. Smartphone sales outnumber those of PCs, and application markets represent a primary channel for the dissemination of end-user software products, hosting thousands of apps and reporting millions of downloads per day. Handset terminals have experienced a shift from being simple communication devices to becoming high-end, multipurpose computer equipment.

An agile enterprise is a flexible, robust organization that is capable of rapid response to unexpected challenges, events, and opportunities. Agile enterprises achieve continuous competitive advantage in serving their customers by following strategies that facilitate speed and change.

There is no doubt that business process management (BPM) has made a key contribution to improving performance of business processes via BPM projects, yet the "management" part of BPM has not lived up to its full potential.

The latest trends in learning technology mirror today's top strategic IT trends: mobile devices and applications, personalization and digital relationships, the cloud, Big Data, actionable analytics, apps, and integrated systems.

Everyone talks about social media, mobile, analytics, and the cloud (SMAC) profoundly impacting the enterprise. But while these technologies hold tremendous promise, each presents its own issues and considerations when it comes to its utilization for business.

Organizations have been developing mobile BI applications for some time now.

When developing a mobile app, especially one that is consumer-facing and is anticipated to build a large and loyal user base, agile and lean methods can be particularly valuable.

Mobile enterprise application implementation involves carefully considering how providing a select group (or groups) of employees with mobile devices and apps can achieve some business benefit.

You can break down the overall task of wrangling a project team through to enduring success into two components:

The definition and adoption of selected practices that will be used to progress through the project: the hard skills subset. Ideally, these are selected based on the nature of the project and the organizational and team culture, but are often adopted without consideration of these factors.

A revolution is coming to learning environments, with its initial impact likely to be seen in corporate training. This revolution is being fostered by Big Data analytics.

At the age of 25 in 75 BC, Julius Caesar was abducted by Cilician pirates (from modern-day southeastern Turkey) while he was sailing for Greece for further study (college, anyone?).

One of the major income opportunities I missed in my life was betting on a common budget question. If I had been given 100 Euros each time someone asked me, "How do I deal with budgeting in an agile environment?" I could probably fund a major contribution to the extinction of some terrible disease in the world.

I had an interesting discussion last week that started by talking about Big Data and ended in reflecting on the goals and skills of architecture.

At every turn it seems leaders are being told to embrace Big Data. They are urged to make "data-driven decisions" and to mine their warehouses of all the buried data gold. The problem? This is absolutely the wrong direction to go in. In a past Executive Update, Cutter Fellow Vince Kellen suggested that the problem is that leadership isn't using their data properly (see "Fighting the Metrics Glut: Keep Your Eye on Mastering Strategic Activities").

Organizations are increasingly inundated by data: more sources of data, more types of data, and more detailed data. Yet while the volume, depth, and diversity of data continue to increase exponentially, the need to cut through the growing noise becomes more challenging and ever-more urgent. Organizations will need a new type of decision maker to address this need.

During the past decade we have seen a great deal of pressure placed on environmental issues. There have been more restrictive emission norms, a somewhat sense of being forced to use renewable sources of energy, the emergence of passive buildings, and even green IT.

Stakeholders new to agile are typically delighted early in the project as they see regular demonstrations of shippable software. They are often fascinated by aspects of the process such as the efficiency of daily stand-up meetings, colorful task boards, burndown charts, and gimmicks such as estimation with planning poker cards. The simplicity and commonsense approach to planning and execution quickly win them over.