Eric Willeke’s look at whether we’ve missed a turn somewhere on the path. Perhaps we need to gene-splice some deliberate characteristics into our next incarnation of Agile. Forget whether we’re picking the right approach: Are we asking the right questions? Are we even asking questions? Do we know what we want to be? Are we even Agile for the right reasons?

Matt Ganis, Michael Ackerbauer, and Nicholas Cariello tee up our CBTJ discussion directly from where the “What will it take?” question leaves off. They look at the challenges and missteps associated with Agile, beginning with adopt­ion, which relies on expectation setting. And there’s no expectation setting without education. Can it be that simple? Occam’s razor says, “Probably.”

Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Masa K. Maeda schools us in some hard-hitting, data-driven food for (evolutionary) thought. He helps us understand what we should be looking for when considering an agility path. It’s no simple checklist or algorithm. Maeda’s outline makes us take a holistic look at our environment; at our choice of primordial soup, as it were. The good news is that we are not completely afloat in the flotsam of the universe. We can choose how we evolve.

This CBTJ issue takes us on an evolutionary journey of Agile. In a rather normalized bell curve, we start with fundamentals and progress through more advanced concepts. We then ease back with practical steps forward and wrap up with a cautionary send-off. The good news is that you’re free to take the journey, or wait for the asteroid. Your call.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the risk landscape for businesses around the globe. Enterprises are learning firsthand whether the business resilience and business continuity plans they put in place are proving successful or not. In light of this crisis, it’s crucial now more than ever to reevaluate your risk management process and ensure you are well prepared for what may lie ahead. As an executive, this involves adapting your leadership and facing the current crisis head-on with a proactive approach to risk management.

Jeff Doolittle helps us to set out on our own path to disruption. He suggests the most drastically disruptive action: don’t do Agile. At the very least, don’t do Agile the way too many others are doing Agile. Doolittle invokes the same line of thinking that started our thought experiment to begin with — what has Agile become? Has it grown in unintended ways? Have we lost what it is supposed to be? What else is there if not Agile? Should we completely abandon Agile? Wouldn’t that be disruptive!

Bob Galen picks up on this issue's evolution theme and goes back to basics. When pursuing Agile, which comes first: the chicken or the egg? Clearly not making breakfast, Galen takes aim at whether teams or leadership “goes Agile” first. He gives us a taste for what it must look like to have teams come first and what seasonings to pepper leadership with so that leadership and teams can be “Agile-y” effective together.

Many organizations today struggle with a strong disconnect between their business model and their IT systems, data distributed over a large number of nonintegrated IT systems, manual interfaces between incompatible applications, or difficulties with EU GDPR compliance. We can trace most, if not all, of these issues back to an abundance of unspecific, inflexible, and non­aligned data models underlying the applications these organizations use to conduct their business. Often, these data models have been developed with insufficient business involvement and in isolation from each other — or have been purchased from vendors with little concern for the actual needs of the organization. In this Advisor, we briefly describe the origins of some of these issues.

In my short series of Data Architecture Advisors, “Data Architecture — Containing the Lakehouse,” and “Data Architecture — Out of the Lakehouse, Into the Lake,” I first introduced the newcomer on the block — the data lakehouse — and then discussed the life of one of its parents, the data lake. What about the other parent, you may ask. You may have heard that it’s dead. To paraphrase Mark Twain’s alleged riposte: “reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.”

In Part 3 of this webinar series, the team examines Risk-driven Operational Planning, and reveals how to use AI/ML technology in practice.

New risk models — ones that look ahead by utilizing AI and machine learning, and that can be continually updated as more data becomes available — will enable organizations to truly understand and rapidly respond to the changing business landscape. In part 2 of this webinar series, you'll learn about how to use AI/ML tools to enable risk-based thinking.

In today’s digital environment, companies and their customers are generating increasing amounts of data. Correctly interpreted and used, this overload can be a means of competitive differentiation. It can improve understanding of customers and their behaviors, as well as control of internal processes. However, in many cases, the amount of data is so large, and the nature of it so complex, that it is difficult to analyze and act upon. As a result, many companies do not manage to harvest the potential value of existing data, despite significant investments and efforts. This Executive Update provides a brief description of how Agile ways of working can help companies effectively and efficiently leverage data in their day-to-day operations.

“How can I tell that they’re working if I can’t see them?” It is a common complaint, based on a centuries-old style of working that we now need to move past. My rejoinder usually is, “When you CAN see them, how do you know they’re not shopping Amazon or playing solitaire?” But, in the days of unplanned, unusual work from home (WFH), this question deserves a closer look. In this Advisor, I’ll make use of decades of remote working, and managing remote workers, in the IT industry, but these same principles apply to many kinds of work.

One of the primary issues impeding organizations from carrying out their customer experience (CX) management initiatives is a lack of CX professionals within the organization. So how are organizations meeting or planning to meet their CX implementation needs? This Advisor provides some answers.

One of the primary issues impeding organizations from carrying out their customer experience (CX) management initiatives is a lack of CX professionals within the organization. So how are organizations meeting or planning to meet their CX implementation needs? This Advisor provides some answers.

Enterprises must manage their data systems to overcome challenges and leverage the opportunities and benefits of digital transformation. The “secret sauce” to achieving this lies in a practical approach that can help enterprises transition from their current state to the desired state in which they are ready for the digital era and beyond.

Your architects need inspiration, new competencies, and added expertise. Led by Cutter Senior Consultant Mike Rosen, these virtual training sessions provide an infusion of expert guidance and best practices that will help your business and enterprise architects improve their skills, find their direction, and remove roadblocks to their individual and collective success.

Created for Virtual Delivery

In part 1 of this webinar series, you'll discover why you need to consider AI and ML approaches to risk management and learn from the case study of a pharma organization that used AI/ML-based risk models to determine exactly when to restart its clinical trials during the Coronavirus pandemic.

In this edition of The Cutter Edge, 25 CEOs and business leaders share their response to the COVID-19 crisis, the use of blockchain in healthcare to manage and monitor COVID-19 patients is explored, and more!

“MiPasa” is an important new blockchain project to assist healthcare providers, government health agencies, public health departments, universities, and other organizations manage and analyze COVID-19 data. MiPasa is a collaboration between many of the world's major health organizations, tech companies, and research institutions to build a blockchain-based, open, “global-scale control and communication system” to facilitate fast and early detection of COVID-19 carriers and infection hotspots via accelerated information sharing among individuals, authorities, and health institutions.

In this report, you'll find interviews, conducted by several partners from Arthur D. Little, with 25 CEOs from Hong-Kong, Singapore, and Italy who shared how they’ve been responding to the COVID-19 crisis. All represent firms that operate critical infrastructures in their respective countries. Their advice is very valuable to CxOs in all industries across the globe.

In this Executive Update, we provide a detailed introduction to the design thinking and Lean Startup paradigms. We also explore their interplay with Agile and how this trifecta can enhance product-market fit by focusing on customer delight.

As the world comes to terms with this “new normal,” it is easy to resort to a mindset of how things will be materially different following this worldwide management and, ultimately, recovery from a significant disruption to how we live our lives. As executive technology leaders, we have a choice to make about how we react to this disruption and how we prepare for future disruptions from a data and digital technology platforms standpoint.

Too many companies rely on a solo approach to handle data security management. With one team working on getting data software out as quickly as possible and another team tasked with testing software and probing system vulnerabilities (tasks that require patience and discipline, and that can’t be rushed), too often the result is missed deadlines, missed opportunities, and missed outcomes.