Let's role-play. Pretend that you are either starting a new company or -- with the help of a magic wand -- completely reengineering the technology delivery model at your current company. What do you do? Here are 10 steps to follow.

Many organizations struggle with getting practical business results from their service-oriented architecture (SOA) projects. In this Executive Update, we examine pragmatic approaches for joining SOA with your solution projects.

For most of my adult life, I have been perplexed by a Pavlovian phenomenon: whenever I, as an engineering manager, released code to manufacturing,1 the marketing folks reacted by conducting a three-week worldwide analyst tour.

With organizations of all sizes across every industry sector facing unprecedented business challenges, IT and corporate decision makers are taking a close look at every aspect of their operations and considering new ways to address their day-to-day requirements and achieve their long-term objectives.

Even for the well prepared, an IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) implementation is a formidable prospect. Before organizations roll up their sleeves and plan tactical projects that fulfill this methodology's vision, as in a configuration management database or business services catalog, they might consider an ITIL readiness self-assessment first.

Enterprise search is applicable to just about any vertical market because organizations in all of them increasingly demand "findability" of information that translates to big benefits. This Executive Update, the second of a three-part series on enterprise search, defines categories for the various enterprise search products and identifies and describes the characteristics of a product in each category.

What has the TV series NCIS got to do with software project estimation? Probably not much, but I wish I had had one of its episodes in my pocket a few years back.

Until humans, applications, and networks become infallible, computer systems are going to generate errors. Identifying and correcting these errors is a task as critical to perform as it is unglamorous. As a veteran programmer said to me early in my career, "The older you get, the less time you'll spend thinking about new functionality and the more time thinking about handling errors in what you've already got."

Developers of videoconferencing have struggled for years with the many problems involved in replacing the face-to-face meeting. While the reasons for videoconferencing are strengthened year by year, actual use of videoconferencing facilities has hardly kept pace. At the same time, new requirements for online meetings are emerging as we move into a collaborative, interactive, high-definition, high-bandwidth future.

Producing a successful product has more to do with satisfied customers than with code elegance. Even more important than meeting project time and budget goals, a successful product meets customer's needs and quality requirements. The adoption rate, whether the number of customers purchasing a product or the number of internal company customers using a product, is a key measure of success. Getting the business requirements right and then supporting the users upon delivery are essential ingredients for adoption.

The Internet and related Web-based applications are promoting the evolution of new forms of cooperation, supported by pervasive, real-time, and distributed platforms designed to facilitate and optimize data exchange and information flow.

In preparation for attending a conference, I noticed a session called "SOA: Hype or Happening?" Even though the session did not advertise more probing and intriguing questions, I opted to attend that session, though I thought a better concept would be "A Checkpoint on the Progress of the SOA Platform."

In my mind's eye, I see service-oriented architecture (SOA) in the real world as having more to do with discussions revolving around these questions:

In this Executive Update, the last in a series of three about outsourcing, I lay out the steps to follow to reshape IT management in an outsourcing operation: assess current conditions, determine the level of satisfaction, set up objectives, and then start with adjustments.

I love it when the number of things I have to do is limited to five or fewer. Psychologists tell us that we're good for seven, but my limit is five. Fortunately, the number really is five; here they are:

Business technology strategy

Computing and communications architecture

Technology delivery

Software estimation is an area where more promises have been broken than in any other area of software development. But like addicts, we keep demanding promises because we need them to survive. As managers, there is a limit to what we can reasonably expect from software estimation, and when we cross that limit, we are, in effect, asking for short-term satisfaction in the form of promises that will not be kept.

Vendors are now offering on-demand versions of their analytic databases and other data warehousing and BI applications. These tools and applications are available to end-user organizations via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model or hosted on cloud computing platforms from Amazon.com and others providers.

Software estimation is an area where more promises have been broken than in any other area of software development. But like addicts, we keep demanding promises because we need them to survive.

In the first Executive Update of this three-part series,1 we introduced the notion of operational business patterns as a key construct in enterprise business architecture. Here in Part II, we compare and contrast two such patterns with which we've had the opportunity to work.

Although virtual-world technology is in its developmental stage, its impact on societies and business operations is already evident. Last year, in Q4 alone, more than US $425 million had been invested in 15 virtual worlds; in Q1 2008, more than $184 million was invested in 23 companies. 1 In addition, many children are being raised with broad access to virtual worlds. Indeed, they may spend more time watching TV, playing, socializing, and learning in a virtual world than in real life.

A couple of months ago, we complimented the folks at Cutter about the recent Cutter IT Journal (CITJ) on Project Management 2.0. 1 We were impressed with the breadth and quality of the articles and their general themes. However, we also noted that the term "business value" was mentioned only once in CITJ -- and was not discussed in any of the articles.

With more sophisticated methods than traditional search, and without manipulating the applications to be searched, enterprise search lets users locate data in multiple repositories simultaneously. The result is better "findability" to cope with info glut and numerous other challenges. This Executive Update is the first of a three-part series on enterprise search.

I've heard it said before that weather forecasters and software developers are kindred spirits. When they are wrong, everyone complains. When they're right, no one notices. So, with that in mind, I'd like to discuss how weather forecasting and the estimation of software development effort in an agile environment are similar.

Google's recent release of its Chrome browser has reintroduced in the media the question, "When will the browser drive the operating system into irrelevancy?" 1 The pundits who have resuscitated the debate obviously aren't friends with many IT managers, who know better. Silly questions are often useful, however, because they provoke sensible questions, such as "What does the Chrome browser release remind us about the potential direction of enterprise computing?"

Most commentators agree that a service-oriented architecture (SOA) center of excellence (CoE) is a critical component in a successful SOA. But what exactly is an SOA CoE, and how is it structured? When is it relevant, and how does it grow? What roles are involved, and how do they interact with other existing roles? To provide guidance about the SOA CoE, this Executive Update examines these questions and more.

This Executive Update is designed to help you understand the outsourcing lifecycle in terms of bargaining power as well as the investment you need to make at the right times to manage its ebbs and flows.