Fair play, Tom. All I can say is that after 20 years of working on, in, and around the Internet, I'm sure as hell not going to ruin my reputation now.
Apologies if I implied anything like that. Wasn't my intent to do so.
Thanks Tom - I just wanted to assure you and all participants that I will not be using this survey as a jumping off point for a sales pitch; and I won't be sharing the email addresses nor any identifiable data with anyone else.
And whether we engineers like it or not, one of the best ways to measure trends is in the relative amount of money organizations spend on them...
I am not sure I completely agree with that assertion honestly.
Seen plenty of projects that saw dumptrucks of time/money thrown at only to never be completed or implemented. Have also seen plenty of projects that didn't get much investment, yet ended up yielding massive benefits in productivity and money.
There is of course some merit there , but I would disagree that spend itself is a good barometer.
Fair points again - my take is that spend is one data point worth looking at, along with staffing, and of course along with the self reporting on what things are automated and to what degree. I hope that this combination of metrics will come together to paint an interesting and informative picture. And I can say that based on the responses so far - they do!
Cheers,
~Chris