Advisors provide a continuous flow of information on the topics covered by each practice, including consultant insights and reports from the front lines, analyses of trends, and breaking new ideas. Advisors are delivered directly to your email inbox, and are also available in the resource library.
Leaders: Steer Toward the Right Technology Portfolio for a Future-Fit Business
Pradipta Chakraborty
CIOs and CTOs must steer their organizations toward the right technology portfolio to effectively realize sustainable business models while generating value for stakeholders. Their role in continuously assessing, designing, and implementing sustainable business models by engaging effectively in a sustainable business model canvas can ensure a future-fit business, which will take organizations closer to a zero or negative impact on socio-ecological systems.
What About Methane?
Curt Hall
Current interest around sustainability and net-zero initiatives mostly focuses on efforts to reduce carbon emissions associated with various products and services. But, as we explore in this Advisor, methane is another emission that wreaks havoc on the environment and deserves our attention.
The Role of Business Architecture in Software Design: A Q&A
William Ulrich
In this Advisor, we share a Q&A session from Cutter Fellow William Ulrich's recent webinar on the role of business architecture in software design.
Effective Conflict Management Can Improve Project Success
Shasheela Devi Karuppiah, Ezuria Nadzri, Govindan Marthandan
A successful project relies on good relationships among team members. To achieve this, managers must be prepared to address three types of communication-related issues: project conflict, relationship conflict, and task conflict.
Drone Delivery: Enabling Sustainability with a Smaller Environmental Footprint
Helen Pukszta
Drones will have a future positive impact on advanced air mobility, particularly in the area of package delivery. As we explore in this Advisor, drones can be used in this manner to enable sustainability while at the same time leaving a relatively small footprint.
Is IT Project Failure as Lucrative as IT Project Success?
Robert Charette
Of all the IT projects underway during the past 15 years, only a small proportion can be classified as “bleeding edge.” The vast majority have been modernizations of existing operational IT systems using proven computing technologies. Thus, it is hard to understand why the level of IT failure has remained relatively constant. This Advisor examines the factors underlying these failures.
Tech Leaders Benefit from a Cyber-Savvy Boardroom
Bob Zukis, Noah Barsky
CISOs, CIOs, and other technology leaders are well-served with a strong digital- and cyber-savvy corporate board, as are shareholders and other corporate stakeholders. In a world increasingly dependent on complex digital systems for growth and resiliency, ensuring the boardroom is a critical digital and cyber-control point is a necessary and overdue step.
Digital Twins for Sustainability: Current Status & Applications
Curt Hall
Digital twins provide an advanced form of simulation and modeling for building virtual digital versions of real-world entities and processes. How are organizations using digital twins to implement sustainability projects? This Advisor considers the use of digital twins in sustainability scenarios — including some real-world applications involving smart cities, smart buildings, and clean energy production.
Quantum Computing Will Drive Parallel Innovation
Joseph Byrum
This Advisor explores how the power behind quantum computing can enable today’s most difficult algorithms to be solved in a matter of seconds, enabling real-time processing, analysis, and modeling of data unthinkable with current methods. Parallel processing will accelerate the effectiveness of teams using data analytics to boost efficiency.
Leading Successful Tech Projects Requires Courage
Ralph Menzano
Why do technology projects succeed? The most vital ingredient is organizational and personal courage.
Green, Secure IoT for Enhanced Sustainability Strategies
San Murugesan
The Internet of Things (IoT) is being used — and can be used — in key business and industry sectors, buildings, and households to improve energy and operational efficiency, thereby minimizing environmental impact. In this Advisor, we take an inward-looking approach to examine how we can reduce IoT’s own environmental impact and explore its cybersecurity risks. We also discuss how we can leverage and benefit from IoT’s full climate-action potential and help create a sustainable environment.
Practical Use Cases of IoT Solutions in Healthcare
Ulrica Sehlstedt, Rebecka Axelsson Wadman, Sean McDevitt, Agron Lasku
Today’s Internet of Things (IoT) solutions have tremendous potential to enhance healthcare operations and generate overall improvements to care outcomes, cost, and efficiency. New IoT solutions for healthcare are smarter and, more importantly, tailored to the needs and requirements of healthcare organizations. In this Advisor, we explore two practical use cases of IoT solutions in healthcare.
Promoting Gender Equality at the Leadership Level
Keren Joseph Browning
The increases of women in senior or executive roles over the past two decades have been less than inspiring. It would seem, therefore, that although leadership literature has played a significant role in raising the profile of women in management, much needs to happen in actual board rooms and management suites in order to advance the careers of women in leadership positions.
Where Organizations Are Focusing Sustainability Efforts
Curt Hall
Governments and industries worldwide are accelerating their efforts to reduce the carbon footprint associated with their operations, supply chains, products, and services — and technology is playing a key role in these efforts. In this Advisor, we look at some of the key areas and projects where organizations are focusing their carbon reduction and other environmental sustainability initiatives.
Flexibility Can Help Tech Close the DEI Gap
Benjamin Duke
A societal attitude that home and childcare duties should be carried out by women is widespread in many countries. During the COVID-19 global pandemic, more women than men lost their jobs or felt they had to stop work. But the IT sector initiated, and needs to continue with, COVID-19-induced societal transformation toward remote work.
What Does “DEI” Really Mean?
Samin Saadat
The term “DEI” (diversity, equity, inclusion) is currently trending across the business world but is frequently and increasingly misused. In this Advisor, we break down each concept into simple language that can help your company "walk the talk" when it comes to organizational transformation.
Advancing DEI with Evolving Attitudes and Inclusive Language
Benjamin Duke
DEI problems are created by offensive and archaic attitudes that persist in the workplace. As explored in this Advisor, organizations can advance DEI by removing their institutional structural barriers and by using inclusive language to help create an equitable workplace.
Aligning Decentralized and Hybrid R&D Activity: A CTO's Challenge
Ben Thuriaux, Enguerran Ripert, Nicholas Johnson
Increasingly, organizations are adopting a decentralized approach to R&D, carrying out a significant amount of activity within the business units. This Advisor explores the challenge of gaining R&D insight, from project management systems that don't fit the bill, to the need for better system configuration.
When Good Data Goes Bad, Part VI
Barry Devlin
Good data is honestly and ethically sourced, fully contextualized, reliable, resilient, widely available, and well-understood. How can this be achieved? Contemplating these characteristics, we are led directly to principles and programs for data/information governance, ethics, and the organizational structures needed to support and drive their success. This Advisor explores the path forward to good data.
Technology Push Is Winning the Adoption Race
Steve Andriole
How are today's organizations adopting and deploying emerging technologies? Research suggests that companies have abandoned their obsession with “requirements” and — however quietly — appear to instead endorse a “technology-first/requirements-second” approach to technology adoption.
Diverse Values and Perspectives Lead to Quality Team Work
Robert Ogilvie, Jeffrey McNally
As work and teams strive to be more agile, team diversity boosts resilience by allowing the team to adapt to new missions and changing situations more easily.
The Root Cause of Ineffective Software Design
William Ulrich
Organizations can utilize business architecture to inform and shape software designs to achieve more stable, maintainable, and scalable software systems. This Advisor examines the root cause of ineffective software design, specifically, the lack of consistency and clarity of the business perspectives being used as input to software design efforts.
Growing More with Less: Drones in Precision Agriculture
Helen Pukszta
Precision agriculture is a set of farming management practices that produces higher yields through more efficient use of critical resources such as land and water, as well as lowered consumption of fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides. This Advisor explores how drone technology enables these practices.
Alleviating Algorithmic Bias in AI-Powered HR & Workforce Management Systems
Curt Hall
Neural networks and other ML model development typically use large amounts of data for training and testing purposes. Because much of this data is historical, there is the risk that the AI models could learn existing prejudices pertaining to gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and other biases. This Advisor explores how the Data & Trust Alliance consortium created an initiative to help end-user organizations evaluate vendors offering AI-based solutions according to their ability to detect, mitigate, and monitor algorithmic bias over the lifecycle of their products.
How to Define, Assess and Plan Successful Technology Projects
Sridhar Deenadayalan
Project success is evaluated by the degree to which an end goal is achieved. Having a vivid understanding of the result, its impact, and the potential impediments to success can help improve a project. This Advisor explores the three beginning stages of a technology project and their keys to success: define, assess, and plan. Each stage has its own characteristics that need examination.