Architects Rule!

David Chappell is Principal of Chappell & Associates based in San Francisco, California. Through his speaking, writing, and consulting, he helps people around the world understand, use, and make better decisions about new technology. In this episode...

The software industry is in a deep crisis. Projects suffer from low quality; schedule slips and cost overrun are common. But this is hardly ordained, since there are plenty of examples of projects done on schedule, on budget, on quality in a repeatable...

Summer is here and for the most of us this is the time to take that well-deserved rest and to stand back a little from the daily grind. It is also a time for some reflection, a time to think about the things that we would like to do during the next couple...

Research suggests that achievement of a successful outsourcing relationship requires a tremendous amount of detailed management. In this paper we draw on relationship theory to understand the management practices of a particular outsourcing setup. An...

Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism...

Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional business models. Senior executives need to think strategically about how to prepare their organizations for the challenging new environment. Trend 1: Distributed cocreation moves...

Recently, I was the happy recipient of some very condescending “advice” from the architecture group of a client.  The tone, quality and delivery of the information completely overwhelmed the actual message (some of which was actually relevant, and...

Stakeholders in business and information technology (IT) enterprises are faced with challenges that result from technological changes occurring at accelerated paces, economic and environmental issues demanding immediate actions, and a need for more precise...

ObjectWatch Earns Patent for Minimizing the Complexity of Large IT Systems Chappell Hill, Texas - ObjectWatch Inc (ObjectWatch), a company specializing in IT and enterprise complexity management, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark...

Aligning Portfolio Establishment Activities to Business Drivers Is Key to Gaining Buy-in and Adoption Where to Begin with IT Portfolio Management To achieve strategic alignment and growth, as well as risk reduction and cost containment, many organizations...

Summer is here and for the most of us this is the time to take that well-deserved rest and to stand back a little from the daily grind. It is also a time for some reflection, a time to think about the things that we would like to do during the next couple...

What we set out to accomplish Talking to customers gives us great ideas about how to make Hotmail better . One of the things we hear about the most is inbox overload: folks want to find important emails quickly. Whether it’s an important back-and-forth...

What do you need to know as you plan to design and deploy SharePoint solutions to Microsoft BPOS cloud? While at TechEd 2010, Zhiming Xue “Z” chatted about the subject with Marc Dencker , Enterprise Architect at Microsoft. In this interview, Marc explains...

For years, CIOs have been fighting the stereotype that they're weak communicators, unable to speak the language of business or relate to anyone outside of IT. But by using practiced communication skills, many CIOs are proving how convincing, credible...

There certainly are other countries that are trying to give India a run for its money in the IT outsourcing market. I’ve written about Vietnam and Egypt (you can read about those two countries here ). But clearly, no country is more aggressive in pursuing...

Last night, I endured plodding, water-logged, rush-hour traffic to Tysons Corner to hear a guy talk about the Internet. But this wasn't just any guy, it was one of the people who helped invent the Internet -- Vint Cerf . Decades before starting his current...

Most of us have seen the fruits of a vendor relationship gone rotten. Perhaps it’s that surly “consultant” that has his own desk adorned with photos and has been kicking around the water cooler for longer than most employees. Or, it may be a hardware...

The Team Software Process Body of Knowledge (TSP BOK) was drafted to define the fundamental knowledge and skills that set TSP-trained individuals apart from other software professionals. It helps individual practitioners to assess and improve their own...

A recent ExecutiveBrief Software Development Trends Survey of more than 500 senior-level business leaders and software development professionals indicates a more optimistic outlook for business in 2010 as compared to 2009, with significant budget increases...

HTML5 is a complex specification that’s being completed in stages. While it’s not expected to be fully ratified for quite some time (Ian Hickson, the editor of the HTML5 working draft spec, suggests it won’t be fully complete until 2022 ), browser vendors...

We’ve been spending time thinking through the differences in implementing new or improving existing EA capabilities for smaller, say a few billion in revenue and larger firms in the Fortune 100 or thereabouts.  Because the larger firms tend to have...

I get many questions on this subject and it often turns into almost a religious debate. Let's throw some structure into it. Here's a decision-to-raw-data stack. 1. Decisions 2. Strategy 3. Policies 4. Objectives (e.g. clear understanding of what is driving...

What constitutes tech savvy today? An alchemy of intellect, ambition, and that uncanny ability to peer around corners. Some of our choices may surprise you. "The empires of the future," Winston Churchill once said, "are the empires of the...

An enterprise architecture is rarely if ever successfully implemented in its entirety in a single project; it is generally implemented incrementally, as a succession of individual business solution projects or coordinated solution programs. How one thinks...

The infrastructure developer/architect will be a key player in the new network Cloud and virtualization are imposing a heavy burden on the infrastructure supporting applications. The "new network" necessary to support the dynamic environment...