A former co-worker of mine always used to joke about our company’s customer database by posing the deceptively simple question: “How many ways can you spell ‘IBM’?” In fact, the number of unique entries for that particular client was in the dozens. Here is a sample of possible iterations, with …

The sheer ubiquity of the Microsoft Office suite has created a cottage industry around the evaluation and critique of its bundled applications. Microsoft Excel, with its attendant realm of spreadmarts and shadow databases, seems to draw the most negative attention from the business world (particularly IT) but PowerPoint isn’t far …

There was an interesting article in the news today that highlights the struggle organizations face when they try to preserve knowledge, codify decisions, or record experiences in a way that can be passed on from one generation of staff to the next. The backstory is that United Airlines recently re-assigned the numbers Flight 93 …