Project Manager as Enabler of Business Value

The roles and skills of IT professionals are shifting and project managers will be well served if they cultivate a personal brand of enabling business value. ...

... "enabler jobs such as business enterprise architects, business technologists, systems analysts and project managers will be most in demand in the near future. " ...

Via ITBusinessEdge: Skills of Future IT Org

Business Process Modeling Projects

Bill Gates reflects on the future and sees business process modeling and process change maturing significantly. ...

... "Really modeling the business where you can actually see schema models that really let you understand what's going on in your business and . . . change those models without having to go back and have some two-year IT project to do it, that's probably in the 10-year time frame. " ...

Via Computerworld: Bill Gates Crystal-Ball

Develop Long-Term View

Can we make sense of trends to predict the future? Here's some tips ...

Pilot Project Evaluates Technology Benefits in Retail Perishables

European retailer, Metro Group, collaborates with Avery-Dennison to pilot RFID technology in enabling smarter processes in managing perishable meat products. Pilot projects are a good way to get some experience, without making a significant initial investment. It is good practice to have a portfolio of pilot projects testing innovative solutions to business problems and to get comfortable with assessing the readiness of technologies for further implementation, shelving, or outright cancellation. ...

... "The AD-222 inlay will be used to tag the foam meat packing trays used in METRO's real, Future Store. The meat tagging application will help METRO better manage the flow of its perishable products, cut down on cost and save time on restocking. " ...

Via Avery Dennison: Metro Pilot Project

Microsoft Cloud Computing Predictions

In order to seecure a foothold into the future of computing beyond desktops and servers, Microsoft appears poised to make eye-popping investments in a cloud-computing infrastructure that rivals peer companies in the space. ...

... "Microsoft has the resources and, it appears, the will to invest many billions in the physical infrastructure necessary to secure a place ... " ...

Via Nicholas Carr Blog: Microsoft data-center investment likely

Spot Those Business Opportunities

Organize for Virtualization Success

A virtualized environment offers the ability to achieve significant scalability. Benchmarks and heuristics can help you assess the future state model for your organization post-implementation. ...

... "Management team: 15 percent of IT groups are creating a dedicated team, often called the virtual computing team, that brings together experts from various IT disciplines to manage the overall virtualization effort ... " ...

Via CIO: Benchmarks

Computing's Future is in the Cloud

Apple and Google. Devices and Clouds. An exciting look into the future of computing by Nick Carr, who sometimes thinks that IT doesn't matter, but always offers an interesting perspective. ...

... "At this very moment, in a building somewhere in Silicon Valley, I guarantee you that a team of engineers from Google and Apple are designing a set of devices that, hooked up as terminals to Google's supercomputer, will define how we use computers in the future. " ...

Via Nicholas Carr's Blog: Future of Computing

More Innovation to Come

Jeff Bezos offers insights on the future ... parallels to the past ... says that there more innovation to come. ...

IT Talent: Women Professionals Needed

NYT shares insights on negative trend for women undergraduate computer science majors. This is a trend that we cannot afford. The IT profession needs the capabilities that come naturally to women: communication, simplicity, relationship-building, caring, nurturing, etc. ...

... "there is one area in which their presence relative to men is static or even shrinking: computer science. " ...

Via New York Times: Female Computer Science Gap

Intuition Creates the Futurescape

Though not exclusively, women exhibit the ability to process volumes of data, sythesize the meaning, and predict a potential future ... a skill all of us could benefit from. ...

... "Capturing the zeitgeist is about the future, an inexact - but invaluable - ability to sense where the world is going before it gets there. " ...

Via Fast Company: Intuition