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NO MATTER WHAT your job title is, if you're involved in IT, you are responsible for software quality. Your right to complain about unstable, insecure, underperforming, inefficient, or inaccessible programs […]

HAVING WRITTEN A column directed at the CTO community for over a year, I have had the distinct pleasure of meeting and getting to know CTOs of all ages, industries, […]

WHEN ED GRANGER-HAPP sold his IT management and consulting business and joined the nonprofit child assistance organization Save the Children two years ago as CTO, he had no regrets about […]

MAYBE IT'S JUST semantics. A bunch of readers commented on my recent column asserting that CIOs and CTOs should spend most of their energy dealing with strategic and tactical matters […]

RECENTLY, I accompanied one of my colleagues on a trip to visit two companies competing to provide back-end services for InfoWorld. One of the companies has been doing business with […]

IT MANAGERS have it all wrong. Most believe that software maintenance programs are supposed to protect their investment in the software they've installed, but what's actually being maintained is the […]

MORE OFTEN THAN not, conventional wisdom is wrong because it's born of conventional thinking. One such example of that is the assumption that the rise of the chief technology officer […]

LAST WEEK, I wrote about making unpopular decisions and taking risks to drive a technology vision. In difficult times, leadership is on the minds of many CTOs. I recently attended […]

RECENTLY, I GAVE a keynote address entitled 'The Future of IT Management' at a software user conference, and one of the primary topics was the qualities of an effective IT […]

MANAGEMENTSPEAK: I propose a series of 'discussion meetings' to resolve this issue you have raised. TRANSLATION: By avoiding an agenda, the actual issue at hand will likely be lost in […]

EXTREME CAUTION IS likely to pervade the corporate budgeting process for much of 2002 as executives weigh what is needed to bring enterprises out of the economic slump. Many CIOs […]

IT SECURITY CONCERNS in 2002 will shift away from perimeter defenses to internal access control and authentication management in light of last year's string of virus and worm attacks, as […]

YOU ARE LUCKY to have a job. Have you heard this lately? I bet if you have, you don't feel particularly lucky. If you are working, chances are you're working […]

ONE OF THE toughest aspects of a CTO's job is time management. In addition to the usual meetings, conferences with employees, and bureaucratic paperwork, CTOs must spend a lot of […]

AS I'VE WRITTEN in this space before, the role of CTO is particularly challenging in a tough economy. The CTO must look for immediate returns on technology investments, balance the […]

ONE OF THE more significant roadblocks to e-business is that IT managers and business leaders have continually underestimated the costs of e-business systems. Underestimating costs is not a new thing, […]

Businesses look to handheld and wireless devices to boost productivity and convenience for their employees or customers. Ignoring Web services for wireless will limit the utility of these initiatives and […]

AS THE ECONOMY continues to cool and companies look to decrease operating expenses, a tug-of-war is shaping up between large companies who want even their smallest suppliers to become e-enabled […]

MANAGEMENT SPEAK: There's a new plan I want to talk over with you. TRANSLATION: You listen, I'll talk. -- IS Survivalist Sanford Wood suggests you listen carefully. IF YOU BELIEVE […]

EXECUTIVES CAN'T discount an e-business manager's technical ability, but they need more from their IT executives and e-business managers. They want those IT managers to be controlled risk takers -- […]

THE COLUMN I wrote a few weeks ago on IT burnout (see June 11) generated tons of e-mail, mostly from battle-scarred IT veterans who have tried to change the culture […]

WE CERTAINLY LOVE our ROI analyses in IT, don't we? Whether you call it the business case or the financial payback, ROI is the precursor to most IT projects. We […]

Despite being a minority in the field, women are not only succeeding in IT but helping one another move up. These women may just give the old boy network a […]

As dot-coms go under, CTOs at traditional brick-and-mortars see a chance to acquire predeveloped technology and other assets AFTER WATCHING THE fast rise and fall of many New Economy pioneers, […]

Does the rate of innovation slow when the business cycle turns down? That's the question IT and business executives need to ask in today's financial environment, where fear and uncertainty […]

Prepare for tighter budgets, struggling outsourcers, deflated employee morale Slowdown, downturn, correction, or recession -- no matter what you call it, times are tougher than last year. Recent days have […]

As you look around today, it's become clear that as for technology and the workplace, the tail may be wagging the dog. In the old days, we first saw new […]

IT SEEMS LIKE yesterday that we decided to take up the challenge of writing a weekly column that propels security issues into the consciousness of IT. When we wrote our […]

Despite the trauma surrounding the high-profile failures of a rash of dot-coms, the rise and fall of these companies has forever changed the way business people think about technology. In […]

Kevin: In today's distributed network environments, administrators don't always have the luxury of console access to their servers. Think, for example, of those with co-located Web servers and remote locations. […]

MANAGEMENTSPEAK: We're in an entrepreneurial environment. TRANSLATION: Not only will I not support you, I'll also put some barriers in your path -- but I'll still be holding you accountable […]

I'M ALWAYS SURPRISED when I walk into IT departments and they prove to be the laggards of the company when it comes to workplace transformation. Surprisingly, many IT organizations are […]

METCALFE FANS, take heart: Whenever one pundit steps aside, there is always another standing by to jump into his or her place. This space will continue to be a source […]

Forget everything you ever learned at business school about traditional management and organizational practices. As Bob Dylan once sang, 'for the times they are a-changin'.' Going forward, the way you […]

The age-old adage 'It's not what you know, it's who you know' has never been truer than it is for chief technology officers. Although CTOs need to ensure that the […]

AS THE INTERNET creates channel turbulence for many consumer industries, some of them are rethinking aspects of their presence in the physical world, including site selection, store size, and design. […]

WALL STREET LOVES a merger: Consolidation increases shareholder value by restoring the balance of supply and demand, creating synergy among products, and opening the way for ever-popular efficiencies and any […]

As we look ahead into the millennium, computing will continue to undergo radical shifts that affect IT and business; expect more mobility, ubiquity, and management challenges PICTURE THE FUTURE: Microprocessors […]

Ethical choices are easier with codes, but enforcement is still tricky TICKETS TO MAJOR-league games, dinners at posh restaurants, golf weekends, Little League rosters on your company's PC -- where […]

UNREALISTIC expectations, poor project management, internal politics, changing business requirements, new technology, and expense cutbacks can all prevent an IT project from succeeding. Will working on a project that fails […]

When your job is to help other people with their IT needs and be responsive to your company's users, it sometimes can feel like you can't turn down user requests. […]

Danny Maco walked out of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) conference session looking shell-shocked. For one hour, he and roughly 200 Gartner Group Symposium attendees listened with dropped […]

As a new manager at a new company, follow some simple rules You have just been offered an IT management position at a new company and are brimming over with […]

As network managers, we've all heard the promises of tool vendors providing the latest in network management technology. We've been told that proactive management will detect problems before they occur […]

How can you tell which high-tech suppliers will keep pace with innovation? Companies pay millions of dollars to market-dominating hardware and software vendors, essentially betting their futures on those suppliers. […]