Bob Lewis

IT's new challenge isn't to get business users to work with the technology in front of them. It's to prevent them from improvising when the provided systems don't address the situations they have to deal with

The IT conventional wisdom that is generously dispensed by many IT think-tanks and opinion makers is largely theoretical and offers little or no practical value

IT can prevent your company from losing control or supporting slackers with these techniques

ManagementSpeak: Times are tough and we all have to pitch in.nTranslation: I have a 4 p.m. tee time, but you'd better work late.nI keep hearing loud, angry people complain that our problems are the result of people refusing to take personal responsibility. Which is to say, they're all someone else's fault.

ManagementSpeak: I will accept no excuses!nTranslation: I don't know the difference between an excuse and a real problem.nToday's survivor, an anonymous government IT employee, knows the difference between ManagementSpeak and real communication.

ManagementSpeak: Times are tough and we all have to pitch in.nTranslation: I have a 4 p.m. tee time, but you'd better work late.nI keep hearing loud, angry people complain that our problems are the result of people refusing to take personal responsibility. Which is to say, they're all someone else's fault.

My cholesterol level, I recently learned, is high enough to experience the Oort cloud up close and personal, which is why I looked at the nutritional information printed on a bag of fudge-covered Oreos. The news was wonderful

Bad infrastructure can make even the best applications unavailable. Great infrastructure is invisible. Do you want to be invisible unless there's a problem? One columnist doesn