Higher expectations of customer service and trends in online fraud are forcing government agencies and businesses alike to modernize their digital identity management systems as more people engage with online services. As we explore in this Advisor, this includes employing applications — in the form of cloud platforms and services licensed from commercial providers — that integrate machine learning (ML), machine vision, and biometrics combined with mobile access in order to automate the verification and authentication of government-issued IDs and other documents.

Citizen development promises to improve enterprise productivity and accelerate value delivery, enabling organizations to achieve outcomes more quickly. This Advisor presents seven key recommendations for organizations undergoing or planning to pursue a digital transformation and adopt a citizen development (CD) initiative.

Time and money are never unlimited, but failing to establish cutoffs for testing is a common mistake that relates directly to how much testing is needed. If the project does not establish cutoff dates for testing, nobody can plan defect work because new bugs will always be arriving on an unpredictable schedule.

The move from conventional computing to quantum computing won’t be like a simple change in technology providers. Quantum processors use a wholly new way of solving complex problems; as we explore in this Advisor, that requires a new way of thinking about problems. Software programs designed for conventional computers aren’t going to work.

If enterprises must be agile as well as secure, there cannot be daylight between security design and the broader architecture and purpose of the enterprise. Many enterprises may need to take a step back, survey the security landscape, and evaluate the level of coherence of their security architecture.

Finding and leveraging the right data is key to achieving strategic advantage. Creating a data supermarket of usable data can help businesses make critical decisions, and a system called cataloging makes this data supermarket possible. This Advisor explores how cataloging enables the connection of different elements of a data pipeline to provide a more orderly and efficient management of data, especially as the volume and variety of data increases.

The next decade in the auto industry will be intriguing to watch as the risk-reward equation between electric vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles continually shifts. New strategic inflection points can be expected to emerge as both battery and IT improve, with the latter allowing the software-defined car to become an everyday reality.

In this Advisor, Jon Ward outlines how learning is blocked by Agile certifications and explains that teams must understand Agile theory to improve continuously. He recommends developing in-house training capabilities as a more effective approach to learning.

Nonfunctional requirements is an overly simplistic view of hyperliminal coupling that arises from transposing the idea of functional requirements and contract certainty to the hyperliminal reality of a system’s behavior in its environment. If we let go of the idea of nonfunctional requirements and focus instead on hyperliminal coupling, we have a greater chance of actually building something that can respond to its environment, as is explored in this Advisor.

Knowing the competitive environment of your company, division, department, or unit is the first step in ensuring you're solving the right problems. This Advisor explores four styles of competitive environments — classical, adaptive, shaping, and visionary — and provides guidance on determining which styles best fit your current situation.

The application of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), are increasingly being used to detect wildfires before they grow out of control, predict a wildfire's path, and assess the risk and potential damage caused by wildfires. This Advisor explores the application of AI and machine learning technologies to mitigate the impact of wildfires.

Commoditization has evolved as expected for end-user IT, as solutions embrace simplicity. But behind the scenes in IT there is chaos that has existed for at least 25 years. Though things may be cheaper, they are just as complex. Explore how the focus needs to shift in order for IT to experience its industrial revolution.

Take a minute and write an answer to the question, “What is technical debt?” Then read this Advisor and reread your answer — and see if it still makes sense.

Companies have been scrambling to respond to the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 18 months since it began, many organizations still wonder what the post-pandemic future holds. The challenges are far-reaching, ranging from resolving daily employee work modalities to existential digital business model transformation. In this Advisor, Noah Barsky provides his perspective on the most pressing challenges awaiting business and the “future of work” and identifies some fundamental business issues that should be taken into consideration by leaders to navigate the “next normal” of the business world.

When contemplating transformation, you should test your assumptions in a pilot project before betting the farm on them. Such a project should be chosen to have minimal impact on the company in case of failure, should be realistic to build with a small team, and should have high potential for growth.

A common denominator behind failed ML projects is the anthropomorphism of technology. This Advisor explores how, through our tendency toward anthropomorphism, we fail to make a critical distinction in the way humans and machines interpret the world.

When cultivating great innovation teams, impactful visioning addresses the central need for purpose, the strategic foresight for leveraging emotional intelligence, the balancing of goals and mission, and mindfully organizing the teams. This Advisor explores the role of impactful visioning on innovation teams.

Understanding what the transition to sustainability means for the organization is as important in the overall transition as developing the list of what to do. In this Advisor, we explore how leveraging an architectural approach for the initiative begins with understanding the business motivation and translating the motivation into new business and operating models, strategies, objectives, and tactics. The next step is to understand how the newly articulated models, goals, tactics, and so on, fit in the overall enterprise. This is one place that an architect’s big-picture view is invaluable.

This Advisor considers a few qualities that an enterprise architect must have. The goal is to provide a starting point for using the framework of architecture quality attributes to understand desirable traits in an architect.

According to findings from Cutter Consortium’s recent survey on intelligent process automation (IPA) in the enterprise, a fairly high amount of interest exists among end-user organizations for using cognitive systems in their IPA efforts, with approximately one-third indicating they would like to do so. In this Advisor, we take a closer look at cognitive computing systems and how their use can support organizations' process automation efforts.

Tech accessibility is best served when there is inclusive design for people with disabilities (PWD) that starts from the design/user research phase and carries through the software development stage to the marketing cycle. When accessibility has not been embedded in the DevOps process, it shows.

Software systems are different. We know this because we make a mess of them all the time. If airplanes and flights had the same failure rates as software, there would be no aviation industry. Why they are different isn’t a question many have taken the time to ask. The answer to this lies first in understanding uncertainty.

Portfolio management is a valuable capability for the execution of corporate strategy. However, results often fail to meet expectations. But overcoming overoptimistic expectations and poor execution is less challenging with a realistic roadmap and framework. To be truly effective, portfolio management should be an extension and execution of corporate strategy, as is explored in this Advisor.

Some people might argue that their data architecture team has defined their data. This may be true, but even in the best of cases, existing data definitions rarely reflect the breadth, clarity, and rationalized business perspectives required to fully represent information as it is viewed by the business as a whole. But there is a discipline that if applied properly can help.