I teach a course to graduating seniors at the University of North Carolina on IT planning and management. We recently finished the course segment on understanding the current state of IT and had begun the segment on developing an IT strategy. I was talking about the usefulness of creating a vision of the future state of IT for this purpose, when a student asked me what the difference was between a vision and a goal.

The mainframe mammoths have no doubt served their masters well over the decades and are known for their legendary reliability and stability. However, during today's times of tighter budgets, attention naturally turns to these expensive computing resources in order to reduce costs. Additionally, the need to address changing business requirements more quickly and the need to cater to a broader spectrum of end users make it pertinent for these legacy systems to be modernized.

Sharing risk information is an organizational challenge. Telling management, team members, and even family what bad things may happen can be a lesson in frustration. On the one hand, we are supposed to have a measure of what doctors refer to as "professional detachment"; while on the other, we want to empathize, sympathize, and relate to the potential negatives. But there is a "gospel" in sharing the negatives: there is a bright spot associated with invoking bad news. It's a matter of basic management communication.

Outsourcing continues to raise expectations and pose challenges for all organizations. Time and again, even experienced organizations run into massive problems, suffer from slow organizational learning, and work in a reactive rather than an anticipatory mode. Many outsourcing initiatives are conducted with inadequate forethought, albeit rarely intentional.

There have been a lot of "studies" on job migration and outsourcing over the past five years that try to position outsourcing as something political: outsourcing creates jobs; outsourcing is the inevitable consequence of globalization; outsourcing will destroy the US labor force. But what's really going on? How do we avoid the spin that proponents and critics of outsourcing present every time the topic comes up?

In 1990, Motorola's cellular infrastructure group took a step up the quality ladder. The managers of its newly reorganized division decided that the way to improve their cellular products was to get customers more involved in the development process. One of the most noticeable signs of this decision was the revolutionary practice of inviting customers to be present at the organization's quality reviews.

This Executive Update is the third in a series of Updates stemming from a December 2005 Cutter Consortium survey addressing business intelligence (BI) outsourcing. The survey asked 140 companies worldwide about their BI practices and their plans or predispositions for outsourcing these practices to third-party experts.

The Windows Communication Framework (WCF) is one of the most interesting and exciting innovations in Microsoft's long-awaited Windows Vista (née Longhorn). Previously known by its internal codename Indigo, WCF is one of an array of developer frameworks that make up Vista's Windows .NET Framework Extension (WinFX).

With the rapid growth of offshore service delivery, many firms are questioning which model of outsourcing is optimal for their business operations. One of the main decision points is whether to partner with a service vendor in running an offshore operation or to do it yourself. Firms may also choose different degrees of partnerships, including short- and long-term contracting, offshore development centers, joint ventures, and build-operate-transfer models.

Technology roadmapping, and its many derivatives, has become one of the most widely used approaches for supporting innovation and strategy at firm, sector, and national levels. First developed by Motorola more than 25 years ago, the roadmapping approach has been adopted (and adapted) by many organizations, initially within large technology-intensive organizations in the consumer electronics, aerospace, and defense sectors.

In this final Executive Update of my latest series, we conclude our examination into the subject of lessons learned based upon the results of a recent Cutter Consortium survey. In our survey of 105 IS/IT managers from around the world (for more information on survey demographics, see Part I [Vol. 2, No. 22]), we sought to discover what processes organizations are using for gathering and disseminating lessons learned, as well as the perceived usefulness of those lessons learned.

I have never found the grim statistics on IT project failures particularly illuminating or convincing. These statistics and their conclusions -- basically, that IT departments are consistently failing at IT and have to try harder, again -- show up periodically from research companies and spur a flurry of funereal and pontificating commentary within the IT community.

I have never found the grim statistics on IT project failures particularly illuminating or convincing. These statistics and their conclusions -- basically, that IT departments are consistently failing at IT and have to try harder, again -- show up periodically from research companies and spur a flurry of funereal and pontificating commentary within the IT community.

Content managing has only recently been recognized as a profession. And through the growth of the Internet, the need for content management has become increasingly important. The catch is that very few people know how to do it well. It's not that the technology is poor or that we lack processes for implementation and ongoing management of content management systems (CMS); rather, it's a lack of people with the right level of understanding to do the job.

Coming into the restaurant at the conference, Ray spotted a table of old friends waving him over to join them.

"Congratulations on your promotion, Ray! Your company is lucky to have you as its CIO," Fran said. "What's your plan?"

Early outsourcing deals typically reflected the fixed-price model, but today there are many more options. Choosing the right pricing model for your outsourcing contract can be a very difficult task. It must fit not only the predictability of your organization's demand for contracted services but the predictability of the underlying costs borne by the service provider as well.

In December 2005, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey of 140 companies worldwide to evaluate current business intelligence (BI) practices and the degree to which organizations are outsourcing or considering outsourcing their BI systems. This Executive Update is the second in a series that analyzes this survey data to gain a better understanding of corporate disposition toward BI outsourcing.

Suppose that you wanted to build a new kind of software development organization -- one that could produce top-quality, feature-rich products year after year without burning out the engineers or their managers. What are the most important considerations in building an organization capable of sustainable development?

The interplay between "theory" and "practice" in IT education is well documented. Scholars and practitioners have been writing about it for decades. Many of these discussions have been about the roles that each community should play: educators should educate; practitioners should apply; educators should communicate principles; practitioners should train.

The interplay between "theory" and "practice" in IT education is well documented. Scholars and practitioners have been writing about it for decades. Many of these discussions have been about the roles that each community should play: educators should educate; practitioners should apply; educators should communicate principles; practitioners should train.

At last Windows Vista (the operating system formerly known as Longhorn) has reached beta, and Microsoft is confident that the client version will enter production by the end of 2006. However, the server (which for some reason is still called Longhorn) will not be generally available until 2007.

Ah yes, the much endorsed, much maligned business case. Before I dive into the business case for visualization, let me share some assumptions regarding business cases that will guide this discussion.

It is a fact that smart people do not always say smart things. In one such case, there was no doubt that the head of development at a veteran Southern California technology company was smart. But that didn't prevent his unfortunate utterance at a 1988 project development review. "Now that we have the requirements signed off," he said, "I don't want to see another customer around here until the project is finished."