Deciding the priority and funding for major IT initiatives, such as developing a new system or supporting a new technology, are among the most important functions of the IT governance process. Anyone who has been part of an IT governance committee recognizes that business needs and goals are the key basis for these decisions -- IT strategy must be synchronized with business goals.

This Executive Update provides an abridged section from my upcoming book, Supply Chain Management: The Real WOW Factor, covering insights about ways to thrive in emerging markets. It delves into the harsh realities of working in these markets and offers key solutions in business operations, such as low-cost, high-quality business models and action-planning focus areas across the product supply chain, from the customer and consumer back through raw and packing material suppliers.

The trends that will define tomorrow are embedded in the dominant technologies of today, and the general laws of the past will continue to apply. We have seen the ascendancy of cloud computing, social networking, and mobility, along with movement in organization that supports efficiency and rapid change. Each represents the current stage along evolutionary paths that continue to affect both the business environment and IT.

All lifecycle methodologies initiate themselves with some concept of requirement. That is true whether they are waterfall-like, OO (e.g., RUP), or even the parsimonious agile methodology. In business applications, forward engineering usually involves further automating some back-office or mission-critical application, and the requirements for the system may be satisfied, so to speak, with a custom or package solution.

2010 is over. It's late and it's snowing. Time to assess where we are. Are we getting smarter, nastier, angrier, or happier? Have we learned anything at all over the past 50 years?

With apologies to people who loved the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, the title above is an easy metaphor for what often happens these days when an organization attempts to develop and launch its own social network: it builds it, opens it with a fanfare ... and almost no one comes to the party.

This is the second Executive Update in a three-part series looking at the extent to which organizational software development teams are using the tools and techniques associated with open source software projects. The series is based on data from a survey Cutter conducted in late 2010.

I am a futurist. My job is to identify what's changing and what isn't changing, how fast it's changing, the interactions betwixt and between (or cumulative impact of multiple change elements), and what C-suite executives can do to benefit from change. I forecast that enterprise risk management (ERM) will be the defining element of enterprise success for the second decade of the third millennium. For the past nine months, I have been intensely examining the possible future trajectory of the practice and practitioners of ERM.

This is the third and last in a series of Executive Updates that examines enterprise architecture (EA).1 Part I addressed questions regarding the practices of EA organizations, while Part II focused on the perceived effectiveness of EA.

Social networks and cloud computing solutions are two of the contemporary trends governments are eagerly trying to engage and use. Mexico's recent experience exploring ideas related to cloud computing and social networks shows that through these technologies, governments can go beyond being users and become driving forces within the new technological landscape, while providing a new generation of e-government services.

Automated unit testing is an essential engineering practice for successful agile software development. A related practice, test-driven (or test-first) development (TDD), takes the idea of unit testing further, mandating the writing of tests before production code as a way of ensuring good, testable design. While the benefits of automated testing seem clear, teams struggle with making the writing of unit tests routine and effective.

The search for simplicity is a long and arduous task, compared to which the Arthurian quest for the Holy Grail may no longer seem so daunting after all. By the time we slay one dark knight, another evil sorceress appears on our path.

Innovation has been a key part of the American popular consciousness since Thomas Edison started applying the principles of mass production to the processes of invention. Innovation has been around for a long, long time -- yet innovation remains an unsolved mystery for most organizations and many executives.

Backsourcing -- that's what we'll examine here in this Executive Update, the third in a four-part series on the "New Outsourcing." 1 Backsourcing is the general term used to describe the "repatriation" of IT or other outsourced services. The term first gained prominence about five years ago with two much-publicized failures. Frequently quoted is the decision by Sears to back out of its megadeal in 2005, a year after it had signed.

Organizations are increasingly coming to recognize the contribution that an effective business analysis function can make to their operations. In a global environment that seems to be in a constant state of fast-moving change, business analysts have the potential to assess environmental issues and develop effective responses.

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. So the game is simple.

In a previous Executive Report, 1 I argued that the terms of distribution that define a product as "open source" (the freedom to access, study, enhance, and redistribute the source code) have several important implications for organizations.

This is the second in a series of Executive Updates that examines enterprise architecture (EA). Part I addressed questions about the practices of EA organizations.1 This Update focuses on the perceived effectiveness of EA.

On the shared services panel at the 2010 Cutter Summit , I turned out to be a minority of one in saying that central and local IT departments can, and should, exist in harmony.

Depending on whom you listen to, cloud computing is either the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's what the vendor has always been doing anyway, or it's an unprecedented threat to the integrity of your operations. Making sourcing decisions based on these messages is not only difficult, it is dangerous.

Data integration solutions that perform well, especially on "big data," evolve from good design. These solutions exhibit one or more of the following characteristics: high level of parallelism, maximized bulk operations, reduced network data overhead, and an optimized/ nonduplicated transformation layer. While these considerations look straightforward, unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. A design solution is context-specific and is often a combination of the above characteristics.

In 2002, Harvard Business Review republished what it described as one of its best articles. Originally published in 1988, the piece outlined how to "get innovative," and in it Harvard Business School Professor Andrall E. Pearson proposed what he called "tough-minded ways" for companies to build an innovative organization.1

Change is happening fast. While many of us thought that cloud computing would take longer to become established than it has, that virtualization would virtualize at its own pace, and that strategic sourcing would stay tactical before it became strategic (in a decade or so), we're finding now that IT is moving at an unprecedented pace.

As we move well into the 21st century, there will be several skill sets critical to the impact of IT on the businesses we enable. One of those skills is business relationship management (BRM). Others include vendor management, business intelligence, architecture, and mobility. BRM is all about relationships and collaboration. It's also about subject matter expertise, models, and methodologies.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a way of thinking about the IT assets that a company possesses. It consists of various tools and is built on concepts that can be used in many ways, but the "EA way of thinking" should be applied consistently and appropriately.