Abstract
Using new technologies often requires IT management to confront complex decisions. Products, methodologies or entire market segments can be transient. Previously unmet needs escalate. Frazzled IT professionals are often swept along like lemmings racing towards the latest answer to our prayers, while vendors embellish their products with an exaggerated buzz that is sometimes surpassed only by our own IT colleagues. This paper reviews lessons learned from past innovations in technology. While acknowledging the successes of each technology, examples will highlight overblown expectations, unrealistic technology maturation timetables, premature obituaries for existing technologies, mythologies of cost reductions and productivity gains and (mostly) anonymous examples of exaggeration from some past CAUSE presentations. Specific technologies referenced include: open systems, CASE tools, OOP, client/server architectures, middleware, fat versus thin clients, Web technologies, business & data modeling, and trends in centralized or decentralized organizational structures.