The Cutter Edge: Prepare a Security Incident Response Plan, Span the Customer/Work Gap, Fall Bookstore Sale

Cutter Consortium

In this edition of The Cutter Edge, you'll explore a multi-pronged approach to creating a strategic incident response plan focusing on continuous process improvement, learn what a team has to do to span the gap between its work and the customer market, and more!


GDPR and Beyond: Data Protection and Privacy Practices

Curt Hall

It’s clear that organizations are going to have to extend their enterprise data protection practices to be more transparent and flexible if they hope to comply with the various (changing) requirements of data protection and privacy legislation.


Statistical Project Management, Part VIII: Social and Emotional Cognition in Projects

Vince Kellen

Here in Part VIII, we discuss the social and emotional cognitive aspects of proj­ects.


A Security Management Cycle for Cybersecurity

Feng Xu, Xin Luo

Cybersecurity incidents lead to huge loss or severe damage to industrial assets. To mitigate cybersecurity threats, it is essential to understand the cycle of infor­ma­tion security governance and control: preparation, prevention, detection, response, and learning. This Advisor closely examines the security management cycle.


A Security Management Cycle for Cybersecurity

Feng Xu, Xin Luo

Cybersecurity incidents lead to huge loss or severe damage to industrial assets. To mitigate cybersecurity threats, it is essential to understand the cycle of infor­ma­tion security governance and control: preparation, prevention, detection, response, and learning. This Advisor closely examines the security management cycle.


In the Digital Game, It’s the Survival of the Fittest

Joost Visser

Digital transformation is not an end point; it is just a beginning. By going digital, your organization is only entering the game. In this Advisor, we share some laws of software evolution and the market forces at play.


Design Oscillations: Don’t “Spin Your Wheels”

Vince Kellen

The communication to design teams of new information that causes rework results in design oscillations. Since knowledge about how to complete a project is incrementally “consumed” by team members, design osc­illations are a natural metabolic byproduct of knowledge-foraging behavior. Design oscillations represent the key engine of the project metabolism. The problem lies in the timing of and team cooperation in synchronization of efforts related to design oscillations. 


Mapping Out a Big Picture

Bob Galen

It may be my narrow experience, but most Agile teams I encounter develop few to no diagrams or high-level views of the architecture they’re implementing. Instead, they allude to “being Agile,” where architectural docu­mentation is unnecessary, which implies that you simply collaborate around the code and magic (emergent architecture) occurs. In this Advisor, I suggest documentation as a good tool for striking the right balance between architecture and agility.


Propel Your Strategic Vision with Business Architecture

How can business architecture help execute strategic vision? This two-day workshop led by Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Brian Cameron explores the ways you can structure your business architecture to effectively facilitate strategy execution.


Take a Data-Led Approach to Risk

Tom Teixeira, Jamie Gale, Immanuel Kemp

Despite the emphasis on and investment in cyber security, traditional approaches are failing to protect businesses and their customers. In this Advisor, we explore the benefits of adopting a new, unified approach that brings together technology and risk management processes, enabling organizations to better protect themselves against cyber threats and safeguarding their businesses, data, and revenues.

 


Take a Data-Led Approach to Risk

Tom Teixeira, Jamie Gale, Immanuel Kemp

Despite the emphasis on and investment in cyber security, traditional approaches are failing to protect businesses and their customers. In this Advisor, we explore the benefits of adopting a new, unified approach that brings together technology and risk management processes, enabling organizations to better protect themselves against cyber threats and safeguarding their businesses, data, and revenues.

 


Addressing Problem Definition in Large, Non-Software Companies

Catherine Louis, Karen Smiley

To some extent, pursuit of new technologies without a clear problem-to-be-solved is natural for basic research, such as for developing new materials. For applied R&D, defining the need to be met is essential, yet many times teams are not able to begin with a clear understanding of the user’s problem. Integrating the end customer into the team would clearly be ideal, but this is often not possible in large industrial development work (for software and non-software teams). So what’s a team to do to span the gap between its work and the customer market?


Stepping Up: Industry 4.0 in Regulated Industries

Joel Nichols

In this Advisor, we explore some of the areas in which specific Industry 4.0 technologies can create advances within regulated industries.


Is Software Eating the World? — An Introduction

Greg Smith

In 2011, the developer of the Netscape browser and cofounder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz stated that “software is eating the world.” I remember thinking at the time that this was a memorable aphorism, but while it captured the increasing importance of software, it seemed somewhat cryptic or vague. Little did I realize that, over the next 10 or so years, it would come to articulate a profound transformation of the world we live in and, especially, the enterprises we lead and operate within.


Is Software Eating the World? — An Introduction

Greg Smith

In 2011, the developer of the Netscape browser and cofounder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz stated that “software is eating the world.” I remember thinking at the time that this was a memorable aphorism, but while it captured the increasing importance of software, it seemed somewhat cryptic or vague. Little did I realize that, over the next 10 or so years, it would come to articulate a profound transformation of the world we live in and, especially, the enterprises we lead and operate within.


Unpeeling the Onion: Leveraging Flow to Create and Sustain a High-Performance Operation

Hillel Glazer

In this on-demand webinar with Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Hillel Glazer, you’ll discover what needs to be “in your center” to ensure your organization is a high-performance operation. You'll learn how to become confident in your measures, find meaning in your results, and have realism in your goals. 


Unpeeling the Onion: Leveraging Flow to Create and Sustain a High-Performance Operation

Hillel Glazer

In this on-demand webinar with Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Hillel Glazer, you’ll discover what needs to be “in your center” to ensure your organization is a high-performance operation. You'll learn how to become confident in your measures, find meaning in your results, and have realism in your goals. 


Lifelong Learning for the Business Architecture Professional

Brian Cameron

There is no single career path for the business architecture professional today. Today’s business architecture professional requires educational career options that provide the flexibility needed to enable multiple career paths and choices.


How to Do It Right: Become a High Performance Organization

Shed light on a critical aspect of the quality-performance connection that is too often overlooked.

Would your organization benefit from business executives who foster overall operational stability, while at the same time use a wide array of options for handling uncertainty? How about a line staff that is empowered to deal with routines decisively? Of course it would. With expert guidance from Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Hillel Glazer, it can.


How to Do It Right: Become a High Performance Organization

Shed light on a critical aspect of the quality-performance connection that is too often overlooked.

Would your organization benefit from business executives who foster overall operational stability, while at the same time use a wide array of options for handling uncertainty? How about a line staff that is empowered to deal with routines decisively? Of course it would. With expert guidance from Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Hillel Glazer, it can.


The Cutter Edge: Building Performance Capabilities, Addressing the Skills Crisis, Pushing Beyond Status-Quo

Cutter Consortium

This edition of The Cutter Edge explores what it takes to push beyond the status quo and achieve high-performance results, how to address the skills crisis, how to facilitate strategy execution with BA, and more!


The Evolving Role of Architecture in Digital Transformation

Michael Papadopoulos, Olivier Pilot

The authors examine how a limited view of digital transformation impedes organizations from fully benefiting from the new, Agile ways of working. They attribute this failure, fundamentally, to reliance on traditional architectural stacks where multiple teams and products rely on large, shared layers, and a change in a layer to meet the needs of one product may inadvertently break other products. To support a feature team–based organization, each team must have full end-to-end ownership of its stack, which consists of smaller, decoupled parts — microservices — that are loosely bound together. The authors advocate domain-driven design and the atomic design principle as the basis for enabling reuse.


The Evolving Role of Architecture in Digital Transformation

Michael Papadopoulos, Olivier Pilot

The authors examine how a limited view of digital transformation impedes organizations from fully benefiting from the new, Agile ways of working. They attribute this failure, fundamentally, to reliance on traditional architectural stacks where multiple teams and products rely on large, shared layers, and a change in a layer to meet the needs of one product may inadvertently break other products. To support a feature team–based organization, each team must have full end-to-end ownership of its stack, which consists of smaller, decoupled parts — microservices — that are loosely bound together. The authors advocate domain-driven design and the atomic design principle as the basis for enabling reuse.


Transformation Starts with the Team

Paul Pagel

Paul Pagel discusses the key importance of a modern software labor strategy for organizations hoping to remain competitive in today’s digital and innovative world. The right team is key to crafting software systems capable of supporting innovation. Software delivery talent, however, is extremely difficult to find for a multitude of reasons. The solution, according to Pagel, is to structure software teams to deal with fragility and to thrive on change.


Software as the Ouroboros: Implications for Software Developers and Business Leaders

Sunil Mithas, Kaushik Dutta, San Murugesan

Software evolution and changes in software development imply that software will become ever more pervasive and affordable, that firms must master disciplined autonomy in order to follow dual strategies, and that the role of IT professionals is being redefined.