Risk management is really tough. It involves thinking the unthinkable and then, because you have thought of the unthinkable, feeling compelled to do something to prepare for it. If the latest Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor disaster teaches us nothing else, it is that if something can go bad, it will.

"Frantic," "indecisive," "technology-disabled," "fantasy-driven," "doesn't know what it wants" -- these are only some of the statements provided by IT people when asked to describe their customers. And this is hardly a surprise. In general, IT processes are characterized by long durations and time-consuming efforts. Once assigned to a task, the IT project manager is first asked to "understand the need" (aka requirements management).

This week I bring you another internationally inspired Advisor from my trip to Rome, where I'm teaching two seminars on enterprise architecture. For this trip, I decided to modernize and leave my trusty old paper Italian phrasebook at home in lieu of a modern, talking, iPhone app. Although there were quite a few to choose from, I started with the free app.

The various articles in the "Technology and the Customer Experience" issue of the Cutter IT Journal (Vol. 24, No. 2), including mine, had, as their most basic notion, "Do unto your customers as you would have your vendors do unto you." This sounds like a pretty simple and basic idea, but it has, as the writers show, quite a few ramifications -- only some of which are technical. They could be summarized as a customer's manifesto as follows:

Over the past year or so, I've discussed some of the more important factors I see influencing the growing use of predictive analytics and data mining (see "The Slow, Steady Climb for Data Mining, Predictive Analytics," 1 February 2011).

On 17 March 2000, there was a small fire at a Royal Philips Electronics semiconductor plant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. The fire was caused by lightening hitting a power line, which shut down the power to cooling fans in a furnace operating at the plant.

For at least 30 years now, one of the explicit goals of software development is reusability. In the beginning, "objects" were going to increase productivity because developers would develop objects that could be reused. Some were and a lot weren't.

From the executive suite, there's a virtually never-ending effort to draw on the experiences of others. Even reading articles like this represents an effort to gain from the insights of those with different life experiences. No one individual has all of the answers. The best answers can be drawn from the vast pool of talent that exists around us.

Cloud computing has emerged as an attractive alternative to on-premise IT, offering organizations cost savings and greater flexibility in how they license, develop, and manage applications and how they store and manage data. But the big "however" with cloud computing remains a lack of open -- and generally accepted -- set of standards, benchmarks, methodologies, and best practices.

Bringing BI down to the coalface has long been a goal for both vendors and IT managers -- in light of the fact that BI remains largely confined to the 15%-20% of workers in an organization who analyze data.

China's national government has devised a strategic plan to support the growth of the software and information services industry. The plan focuses on improving the industry's innovative capability and increasing information services innovation. The plan sets a specific goal, which is increasing the proportion of software and information services revenue in the overall electronics and information industries from 12% to 15%.

Last week, marketing giant Epsilon Interactive reported that hackers had gained unauthorized access to a gigantic trove of email addresses the company manages for its various clients. In fact, this might be the largest data breach ever (or at least ever reported), involving what some estimates report to be millions of customer email addresses and names. About 50 of Epsilon's clients are affected.

A great deal of attention has been given to the design, deployment, and management of Web services as part of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) within the enterprise. The attention is well warranted as SOA represents a substantial advance in the architecture of enterprise systems.

When I get calls from new clients, they often start their story with the words, "We introduced agile 12 or 18 months ago on our own and had some success.

With the increasing importance of information systems for business success, the risks associated with the temporary inaccessibility of information due to any unplanned failure of computer systems have significantly increased. Failure of a computer system may be the result of various factors, such as faulty or improper actions of users, or external factors, including man-made or natural disasters.

The development and nurturing of IT management (and technical) competencies has historically focused on the "supply" side of IT.

Last week, I was visiting Paris and got the chance to marvel at the Tour Eiffel, one of the world's most well-known and instantly recognizable structures. I also took the opportunity to learn a bit more about its fascinating history.

In an age when rates of project failure sadly top 50%, having the chance to actually restart a project that has been stalled, cancelled, or put on hold for whatever reason can be very positive. But it's no small undertaking to restart a stalled project. The project manager may tend to think that he and his team have nothing to lose since they can't do any worse than the first team. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. This isn't a scenario where you're coming in as the superman manager trying to rescue a project that is in progress but is failing.

Back in December, when making predictions for the upcoming year regarding important BI trends, I wrote that we could expect to see use of text mining and analysis increase in 2011, just as it has almost every year since we've measured its adoption (see "What Lies Ahead: BI and D

Agile software development involves people working together, across disciplines, to deliver business value efficiently. While the Agile Manifesto states that agile development values "responding to change over following a plan" and "working software over documentation," that does not mean plans are not important. A plan allows you to measure your progress, focus your efforts, or, more important, present a target that stakeholders can invest in.

Last year, I wrote an Advisor titled "Jumping the Walrus: When Risk Management Goes Bad" (1 July 2010), which discussed the systemic risk management blunders by BP and the oil industry in general that came to light in the aftermath of the

With the explosion of data and computing devices over the past decade and the about-to-explode iPad-like consumer device market, it is unsurprising that a vigorous debate about how people should use or not use data and computers has ensued.

Excellence is an old topic, more honored in a book than observed in the workplace. Nonetheless, it is an important topic because of some almost unbearable forces that are shearing the workplace.

Software development has been full of fast-paced advancements, with a focus on increasing efficiency and reducing cost/efforts for stakeholders. Applying these changes forms a crucial part of the reusability concern that has been at the forefront of new business initiatives or development. Reuse has been central to many of the development models as have such tenets as "don't reinvent the wheel" and "don't repeat yourself."

Risk management is a formal process owned by senior executives responsible for keeping everyone safe and sound day and night. They report to internal and external audit committees or, actually, prefer to avoid any and all interaction with audit folks since even a casual discussion with auditors can result in a boatload of work for entire teams of already overworked professionals.