You may not like what you are about to read. Most senior executives are steeped in a way of thinking that was already obsolete when you learned it. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. More on how it happened below, but first....

Dear Agilist,

Everywhere I go I hear the same thing: "Culture and management are the major impediments to enterprise agile adoption."

If you're trying to start an EA group, immediately after you've discussed what the EA organization is going to do with your boss, the discussion immediately turns to people: What kind of skills should they have?

Just a couple of years ago, we were witnessing -- and some of us were deploring -- the "irrational exuberance" as well as the uncontrolled fears of many customers and decision makers about cloud computing.

Business intelligence does not refer to a product you can buy or to an application you can build. Instead, it is a new way of delivering and managing the decision support function in an organization.

We back our qualitative work as Cutter consultants with plenty of quantitative data. We measure and report on productivity through the Productivity Index.

The late management theorist Peter Drucker once said that everyone in an organization has to ask him or herself, "What information do I need to do my job? How am I going to get it, and from whom? And how do I know that it is true?" Furthermore, each person must also ask, "What information am I responsible for?

We back our qualitative work as Cutter consultants with plenty of quantitative data. We measure and report on productivity through the Productivity Index.

Enterprise architecture is grossly misunderstood. It's not an IT issue; it's an enterprise issue for the following reasons:

When Tom was put in charge of a group that was geographically dispersed, he really floundered around in the dark. He suffered misunderstandings, relied on inaccurate data, made some bad decisions, alienated people, and was insecure in knowing what was really going on and what should be done. Tom had been a highly successful ScrumMaster.

One of the biggest complaints leveled at Hadoop is that it is intended mainly for batch processing and doesn't do real time very well.

The corporate world is littered with the carcasses of enterprises, large and small, wounded -- some mortally -- by failures of the "Siamese twins" of leadership and risk management. Why are these two concepts referred to as "Siamese twins"? Because neither can function without the other.

For 23 episodes, I have listed the many types of problems and misconceptions I have seen at our clients, at conferences, or in user groups. The biggest trap, however, is what I have saved for the last Advisor in this series: being afraid of pitfalls.

The role of an architect is often loosely or ill defined so I'm not surprised when people ask me what I think an architect's role should be, and how one type of architect relates to another. In reality, this is to be expected given the range of needs, projects, processes, and organizational structures at different companies. Just today, two different clients asked about the role of a solutions architect, particularly in relation to an enterprise architect.

The table below summarizes the main differences that I typically see.

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Cutter Fellow Robert N. Charette and Brian Hagen's introduction to the July 2012 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Fixing ERM: From IT Security to Human Behavior" (Vol. 25, No. 7). Learn more about Cutter IT Journal.]

The avalanche of digital data that has resulted in Big Data storage and analytics is leading to additional issues as data volumes continue to grow in volume, variety, and velocity. A critical issue for the enterprise is how to maintain control of these immense pools of structured and unstructured data.

Often managers latch on to the methodologies and practices that happen to be in fashion -- the latest management BS! Some make desperate demands for their staff to react, perhaps by creating a service catalog, but without identifying who is going to use it and how it is to be used. Despite containing some really good guidance, ITIL can become a distraction, with organizations using it unsuccessfully as a safety blanket or shield.

Constantly changing security boundaries that are simultaneously "owned" by everyone and no one demand a new approach at both the technical and policy levels. A properly designed and managed enterprise security architecture (ESA) enables this. The less-defined security boundaries that encompass infrastructure require a new way of defining cyber security architecture for the cloud. Organizations still have the same mission; they just need to change their mindset on how they do business in the cloud.

Which do you want more: to be right or to learn?

In March, I discussed various tablet options in regard to their possible roles in the enterprise (see " Tablets for the Enterprise").

In March, I discussed various tablet options in regard to their possible roles in the enterprise (see " Tablets for the Enterprise

Project managers should be aware of the types of creeps and their causes, so they can account for them in their risk management plans. Trip wires and early warning systems will have to be put in place to alert managers of pending problems and to take appropriate action before it's too late.

As the use of mobile devices in the enterprise continues to grow, I see the realization of a dream that has, for the most part, been elusive: the greater use of speech-enabled enterprise applications.

CIOs sit between a rock and hard place.

I used to say to a client that "I am only as good as my data" when the input I received for an engagement was inadequate. I still use this phrase, when appropriate, from time to time.