The team is the fundamental unit of organizational work, not the individual. But the ways we manage our teams — and thus our talent — often set us up for systemic gaps and increasing challenges (versus continuous improvement) over time. Today’s executives face two ongoing complex problems: business strategy and people leadership. The invisible nature of these talent issues makes solving them a strategic need through HR capacity building over time.

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices — ranging from connected consumer products like smart speakers, TVs, refrigerators, and stoves to sensor-enabled industrial machinery and business equipment — continues to proliferate, but many of these devices lack strong built-in security features. This Advisor considers the application of AI and blockchain technologies for strengthening the cybersecurity capabilities of IoT devices and networking environments as well as future developments in this area.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to businesses across all sectors and throughout the world. Risk management systems and contingency measures have been put to the test, and as is so often seen in moments of crisis, many have been found wanting. The result? A real need now exists to determine what is meant by business resilience and how to apply it to organizations’ different operating models.

Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Barry M. O’Reilly introduces the concept of residuality theory and its application to the complex relationships that exist between different risks in the modern business environment. Expanding on the issues of complexity versus complication in the world of enterprise software, O’Reilly shows how the principle of residuality enables organizations to anticipate the impact of chains of interconnected risks.

Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Barry M. O’Reilly introduces the concept of residuality theory and its application to the complex relationships that exist between different risks in the modern business environment. Expanding on the issues of complexity versus complication in the world of enterprise software, O’Reilly shows how the principle of residuality enables organizations to anticipate the impact of chains of interconnected risks.

Noah Barsky explores some key shifts in mindset that effective risk management will require, such as making risk management the responsibility of all, avoiding silos, looking at issues that are important but not urgent, and building a culture that can ask, “Why?” Barsky focuses on the need to not only connect the dots between different risk areas, but also between risk management and other corporate planning and monitoring activities.

Payson Hall explores the general con­text of risk management, noting the conflict between efficiency and resilience in organizations employing Lean practices to reduce their costs at the expense of robust risk management. Such approaches may beat the odds in the short term but lead to dangerous exposure when times are hard, as has been observed during the current global pandemic. Hall discusses ways in which a modest investment can provide vital hedging against catastrophe.

Cutter Consortium Fellow Bob Charette explores the current state of risk management in a world of repeated failures to adopt the lessons of the past, examining several of the most common ways in which risk management is failing and the reasons why. In his analysis, different areas of risk form a broader “risk ecology,” in which risks interact in complex ways, and isolated analysis and manage­ment of each area has the potential to increase risk in unforeseen ways.

In the second installment of their webinar series, “Using AI/Machine Learning to Manage Risk,” Cutter Senior Consultants Michael Eiden, Craig Wylie, and Tom Teixeira answered some questions about new risk models that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to understand and respond to the changing business landscape.

In the second installment of their webinar series, “Using AI/Machine Learning to Manage Risk,” Cutter Senior Consultants Michael Eiden, Craig Wylie, and Tom Teixeira answered some questions about new risk models that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to understand and respond to the changing business landscape.

To tackle the high and unpredictable demand volatility, lean production is not enough. Instead, manufacturing companies must improve responsiveness or, in other words, become Agile. In this Advisor, we focus on the production unit.

Residuality theory is a new paradigm that views systems as stacks of interconnected residues - the remains of the system after it is impacted by a particular form of stress. Watch this on-demand webinar with Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Barry M. O'Reilly to find out how it can replace cumbersome architectural frameworks, address nonfunctional requirements early, and provide justifiable architecture decisions.

While the software industry is currently grappling with ideas of complexity and resilience, there has been very little in the way of concrete actions or activities that software engineers can use to actually design systems. Residuality theory answers this need and draws on complexity science and the history of software engineering to propose a new set of design techniques that make it possible to integrate these two fields.

Project schedule risk management using modeling and simulation tools and techniques is a tried and proven best practice in organizations and industries that strive to do more with less. However, there are some challenges associated with this methodology, and the intent of this Executive Update is to help those who strive for excellence in project management of complex projects to see how proactive risk management can be done successfully.

My studies of enterprise architecture (EA) practices in multiple diverse organizations have identified several consistent patterns describing the size and structure of architecture functions that companies tend to find optimal for their needs. We can use these empirically observed generalities to synthesize a simple, heuristic three-step approach for designing organization-specific architecture functions.

Intelligent automation applications are reaching the point where both organizations and governments must create policies regulating the use of and the liability associated with using smart technologies.

Intelligent automation applications are reaching the point where both organizations and governments must create policies regulating the use of and the liability associated with using smart technologies.

This Advisor looks at three of the challenges facing customer experience (CX) initiatives in the enterprise: problems providing seamless CX across all customer channels, a lack of CX professionals in the organization, and difficulty defining/mapping CX.

This Advisor looks at three of the challenges facing customer experience (CX) initiatives in the enterprise: problems providing seamless CX across all customer channels, a lack of CX professionals in the organization, and difficulty defining/mapping CX.

This Executive Update extends my system dynamics (SD) methodology proposed years ago to integrate the use of SD modeling within the PMBOK Guide’s risk management process. It provides a useful framework for effective management of project risk dynamics.

A primary motivation of decentralized social media is censorship resistance, often achieved through anonymity. But anonymity comes with a price. Checking the reliability and trustworthiness of information is much harder with anonymous information. In this Advisor, we present a brief overview of two main under­lying technologies that help in decentralization while still providing a degree of trust between networked entities: (1) P2P social networks and (2) blockchain technology.

Even those who recognize the advantages of a cloud-based remote access platform over a VPN might argue that the current WFH solution is a temporary anomaly. In that case, why not just muddle through with a VPN until things get back to normal?

We have typically found in the acquisition process that EA is primarily a technical capability and engaged in a constrained fashion. In most firms, the EA team does not possess the necessary critical business knowledge and, therefore, is not able to contribute to the acquisition process through direct engagement. At some pioneering firms, however, the reformation of EA has explicitly aimed to build a business strategy competence in the EA team by giving enterprise architect roles the responsibility for business and operations architectures.

We have typically found in the acquisition process that EA is primarily a technical capability and engaged in a constrained fashion. In most firms, the EA team does not possess the necessary critical business knowledge and, therefore, is not able to contribute to the acquisition process through direct engagement. At some pioneering firms, however, the reformation of EA has explicitly aimed to build a business strategy competence in the EA team by giving enterprise architect roles the responsibility for business and operations architectures.

This edition of The Cutter Edge examines business strategies necessary to prepare for crises, identifies the tactics to whole company transformation, explores the processes and practices that support business agility, and more.