This week, I purchased a new 2009 Dodge Journey and retired my Ford Explorer... My Ford Explorer was the first car I truly desired and loved. Last week, the rear-end locked up on the highway and I had to have the state police push me to the side of the road. The repair ended up costing $695 which is...

Over the weekend, my oldest son asked me a question that has been haunting me all week... I am a firm believer that leadership requires followership and if no one is willing to follow you then you are not a leader but simply a manager. The biggest mistake in my career is that I had an opportunity to...

It is way too convenient for us American's to blame India for our troubles. We can too easily say that college kids no longer want to pursue IT degrees because of outsourcing to second-class countries such as India when reality is a little different. If we were more honest with ourselves, we would p...

CIO Magazine outlines the challenges of getting software vendors and IT consultancies to not fib when responding to RFPs, I figured I would provide a few tips... If you work for a insultancy and are on the bench, regardless of your knowledge of a particular technology or approach, you are usually as...

It is the time of annual reviews in many corporations and therefore I will share some thoughts on worst practices in compensating IT professionals... Traditional pay structures work on the false assumption that people behave rationally. A wise architect I know once said that enterprises are nothing ...

There are way too many enterprise architect's who behave like ass clowns by taking the notion of best practices as holy doctrine... There’s nothing funnier than someone who has been practicing a particular technology for six months spouting off about them. Well actually there is, and that’s the ...

When I talk to my peers who work for other large enterprises, they believe that the root cause of bad IT is the lack of critical thinking and application of disciplined problem solving... Perception management is getting in the way of disciplined thinking where management proclivity of "just get it ...

Continuing previous blog post on how excessive focus on process is harmful to the enterprise... Processes should be enablers and multipliers for sound IT work, not replacements. Processes and their value proposition should also be apparent to all those infected by it. Sadly, ITIL is starting to beco...

There is a right and wrong way to ask questions... When you ask a question, you are asking people to do you a favor. People have no reason to help you. I wonder if I had asked Craig Randall in a nicer way why DFS is designed the way it is or James Robertson why he believes Smalltalk as a great langu...

Today’s edition of Ignites (subscription required) features an interesting story about the drastic cuts that mutual fund firms are making to their online marketing efforts. This is hardly... This is a content summary only. Please visit the site for the full post....