IT strategy

The impact of consumer-oriented devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) will increase dramatically, necessitating IT departments to update and expand their architectures and standards. Those that embrace these technologies will enable knowledge worker creativity and innovation. Those that do not will spend increasing amounts of nonproductive time in a vain attempt to police and control the uncontrollable.

Contemporary information and communication technologies, particularly the technologies associated with Web 2.0, have enabled many new opportunities for organizations to effectively harness the capabilities and knowledge of potentially global crowds (activities collectively known as "crowdsourcing").

A customer-centric business is an approach to business operations for sustainable profitability through customer loyalty due to the actions of an empowered workforce. In addition to business benefits, a customer-centric approach provides an overall framework for the design, development, operation, and management of IT. This Executive Report by Keith Sherringham and Bhuvan Unhelkar addresses the implementation and operation of a customer-centric business for aligning business and IT.

In this Executive Report by Robert K. Wysocki, we explore in detail the 12 basic tenets that characterize complex project management (CPM).

In recent years, both the enterprise risk environment and enterprise security measures have evolved considerably. In this Executive Report by Brian J.

In life we are all familiar with debt, especially financial debt. The longer a monetary debt is left unpaid, the more interest accrues. Eventually bankruptcy may be declared. Similarly, in software development, every time something is executed incorrectly, it may be thought of as technical debt.

Internet-based communications have opened up the doors for businesses to collaborate through Web services. Fuzzy boundaries of electronic organizations enable transcendence of competition and engender an era of enhanced customer experience through business collaboration.

Corporate adoption of mobile BI -- the ability to access, view, and interact with corporate data on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets via reports, interactive dashboards, visualizations, and ad hoc reporting -- was fairly limited for its first five years or so.

The idea of managing demand has gained much traction in recent years, especially with demand for resources outstripping the available budget. Increasingly this squeeze is now affecting the relationship between IT and the business. Any successful business model must be built on effective management of demand as well as supply.

Knowledge synchronization is a crucial aspect of knowledge management (KM) that bridges the gap between the tacit, subjective knowledge stored in people's heads and the explicit, objective knowledge stored within the organization's IT systems.

The success of enterprises depends upon their ability to define, prioritize, and execute mission-critical projects successfully. Project management is essential, but which project managers (PMs) best serve the organization?

Although offshoring has existed in a variety of forms for decades, its controversy continues unabated. The debate includes whether offshoring actually saves money or not, what activities are and are not good candidates for offshoring, and most controversial of all, its effect on employment in the consuming countries. This Executive Report discusses the offshoring phenomena in an historical context, investigates whether offshoring has actually resulted in IT-related job losses, and examines its effect on IT-related occupations in the US and Europe.

Companies don't set out to alienate their customers. Unfortunately, many interactions leave the consumer feeling dissatisfied and even downright hostile. All too frequently, these customer service disasters are linked to a failure in the use of technology.

In astrophysics, dark matter is responsible for the universe not flying apart, thus encouraging the growth and stability of the universe's cohesiveness and structure.

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The agile movement has reached a tipping point. It can either remain a powerful approach to software and business product development, or it can evolve and expand into an even more powerful business and cultural paradigm.

The global financial crisis and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlight the significance of risk in business and the need to embed capacities and capabilities for the management, mitigation, and response to risk.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and agile software development have both evolved in recent years toward a combined concept of enterprise agility. Coming from different environments and differing in requirements, they are nonetheless founded in many of the same principles. Bringing them together, however, requires some changes to both.

This Executive Report by Steve Andriole and Vince Schiavone focuses on the roles that social media can play in the execution of your business strategies and the improvement of your business processes and models. The report describes a process that should lead to the optimization of social media in your company.

This Executive Report by Robert K. Wysocki explores the collaborative relationship that can and should exist between a project manager (PM) and a business analyst (BA).

Innovation

Colleges and universities are rapidly adopting online learning and other computer-based learning tools and techniques. The next generation of graduates will be computer savvy but not necessarily technically or socially competent. CIOs should take an active role with educational institutions as colleges struggle to redefine their core curriculums to be relevant for today's learning community.

Companies such as Siemens USA, Best Buy, and Sun Microsystems use social media to form powerful online communities. Those communities — through an “amplification effect” — foster innovation and process improvements far more quickly than companies can achieve with traditional improvement mechanisms.

Change is a fact of life and has many benefits, but it is hardly ever easy and brings huge stress. How you manage the change process can determine not only the ultimate success of the change effort, but also the health of your organization during and after the change.