Dovetail Software Blogs: The Troubled Future of IT
“Gartner
at its annual Symposium/ITxpo this week in San Francisco gave a loud
wake-up call to the IT profession, accusing it of a culture of failure
that accepts mediocrity as the norm. The industry has to change.
“What
is the changing nature of IT, and its role in the modern enterprise? As
Gartner says, IT faces radical transformation, either passively or
actively. ‘Operational IT forms the essential infrastructure of almost
all businesses. Strategic IT matters even more.’”
Microsoft is dead in theory
“A
few days ago, Paul Graham proclaimed, ‘Microsoft is dead.’ He later
explained that what he really meant was, ‘Microsoft doesn’t matter.’
But whether it’s dead or just irrelevant, the company remains an
extraordinarily healthy economic organism. [...] Microsoft is growing
at a remarkably robust pace for a company its size. [...] Right now,
Microsoft remains a formidable company and competitor, with a whole lot
of cash at its disposal.”
Outsourcing’s Next Wave
“Some
of the business and financial benefits of this next wave of global
sourcing include significantly lowering R&D costs and shortening
time-to-market for new product development processes. Many companies
are lowering their relevant R&D and engineering costs by 20 to 40
percent, while also shortening their time to market for new product
development initiatives.”
Call Centers Can Do a Better Job
“The
newest trend among consumers is the desire for more proactive
communications by companies, either by phone, email, Web chat, or SMS
text message. Ninety-five percent of respondents said they would be
receptive to cross- or up-selling opportunities, depending on the
context and communication method. Eighty-seven percent would even have
a more positive impression of a company after receiving a courtesy call
to thank them for their business or to ask about their satisfaction,
though only 43 percent reported having received such a call.”
A sustainable EA direction
“Ten
years after the Act of Clinger-Cohen , the definition of Enterprise
Architecture has not reached to a consensus in the EA industry. The
discussion of “What is EA ?” is still as
fresh as it was ten years ago. EA definition appears to get even more
diverging rather than converging . The Enterprise Architects consume
more energy to define EA instead of practicing EA. It is critical for
EA architects to reach consensus on what is EA.”
Requirements Management
“What
I found in that list of about 150 or so items was a bunch of statements
of all sorts. Some were indeed problems. [...] Many of them were goals.
[...] Some of them, fewer than I expected actually, were deliverables.
“It
was troublesome categorizing some of the statements. Some had both a
problem and a goal. Some had multiple goals or multiple problems, and
even a few with all three of the requirement types.
“My goal in all of this is to discover a few high-level goals that will intersect with a number of prominent problems”
KM: still a long road ahead
“Despite
significant IT investments in delivering actionable information, the
survey results indicate that senior managers are not reaping benefits
from these investments. Managers are frustrated with the inordinate
amount of time they spend collecting and synthesizing information in
order to make decisions and take actions. The research also found that
managers who felt they spent too much time gathering data were more
likely to be dissatisfied with their employers.”
