Recently, I was struck by a solution recommended to a major real estate company, a solution that I had a hand in crafting. I was also struck by how the adage "Everything that goes around comes around" is still so true. While we don't talk that much anymore about dumb terminals or green screens, we do talk about thin clients, server-based computing, and portals all the time.

Agile methods are not appropriate for certain development projects that have special requirements. But in many cases, organizations resist using an agile approach on any project. Why?

NASA kicked off its safety climate and culture change initiative in February 2004, as a result of the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), which examined the February 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident. CAIB had determined that NASA's safety climate and culture contributed just as much to the accident as did any technical or physical reasons.

Contemporary businesses run on the data they create, store, and access. We perform data backups to mitigate the risks associated with losing this critical data. We must ensure that our backups provide adequate protection from the ways in which our vital data might be lost.

Experimentation is essential to the growth of all organizations. It fuels the discovery and creation of knowledge and leads to the development and improvement of products, processes, and business models. Without experimentation, we might still use rocks as tools and live in caves. With breakthrough technologies, it is now possible to perform a greater number of experiments in an economically viable way to accelerate the drive toward innovation.