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.

The barriers between business and IT are long-standing. Historically, the business would ask IT to deliver on their requests. IT felt the requests were misguided or wrong. So IT built what they wanted to build. Of course, the response from the business was, "That's not what we wanted! We can't sell that!" However, it doesn't stop there. IT began gold-plating some features, adding features they thought customers would want (or things that IT really wanted to build) and not building other things.

The challenge in measuring EA value is not a lack of metrics; it is knowing which ones make sense for an organization and provide the most "value" for the effort. The key to a successful value measurement program is to identify metrics that correlate to business key performance indicators (KPIs).

Clients come in all sizes and descriptions. Some are a veritable fountain that continually spews ideas and changes. This may seem like an enviable situation, but don't overlook the need for convergence to a solution. Their behavior can cause the team to spend too much time on non-value-added work as they do their analysis of the scope implications and contribution to business value. A strategy to postpone some suggestions to the next version might work. Others don't seem to have any ideas to share.

Social business analytics enables organizations to apply real-time sentiment and insights derived from social media and enterprise sources to identify and target key influencers (on social media sites), generate new leads and opportunities, and improve customer loyalty.

Organizations can build resiliency in their employees by helping them successfully adapt to change. Resilient organizations are not satisfied with the status quo and continually seek opportunities for constructive change.

There is an organizational pattern I find that is frequently the root cause for problems in many organizations. I call this pattern the "project congestion," and it is regularly found in product organizations that have several dozen to several thousand members. A standard way to keep the finances of these organizations in control is to set up projects of one or more years that are supplied with a certain budget and work toward some business goal.

This Advisor points out that decision making, which is a critical aspect of the architect's role, is really a management role in disguise, delegated down by senior management. It explains as well that architecture is really a management discipline, even if it doesn't feel quite like one.

Data is everywhere. IBM projects that, every day, we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. In relative terms, this means 90% of the data in the world has been created in the last two years. These numbers are a strong indication of the ubiquity of big data and the corresponding need for analytical skills and resources, because as the data piles up, managing and analyzing these data resources in the most optimal way become critical success factors in creating competitive advantage and strategic leverage.

As mobile apps become increasingly sophisticated and important, they are changing the ways in which people interact with the IT environment. Mobile apps are accessed differently than is desktop software in that mobile apps are always available and become an immediate part of personal interactions. As they are used for social purposes -- for scheduling and meetings, to access travel details, and to perform innumerable mundane functions that coincide with the needs of ordinary life -- mobile apps leave a rich trail of data that can be exploited, for better or for worse, by companies wishing to enhance their marketing efforts. But these data streams also provide extraordinarily rich pickings for nefarious purposes. Added to this risk is the growing use of business apps that connect to corporate systems and data, creating an increasing security threat across a wide range of vectors.

While it might sound like a little bit of voodoo, it's not. Prosperity thinking ties back to organizational and group theory from Tuckman to Ouchi. If we adopt a consistent attitude (Ouchi) and it's one where we see the good in the team, the organization, and the world around us (Tuckman), we will have more positive outcomes

In the previous Advisors in this series, we pointed out that development can be sorted out into three classes (see Figure 1):

Figure 1 -- The three types of development efforts.