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.
When Good Data Goes Bad, Part I
Barry Devlin
This Advisor discusses how data doesn't really "go" bad, but the use to which it was put was dramatically changed and that new use drove the collection of even more categories and volumes of personal behavior data, without a comprehensive ethical review. In this series, we’ll point out what can go wrong with data — and what to do about it.
The New Rules of Analytics: A Q&A
Vince Kellen
A recent leap forward in database and analytics technology includes streaming technologies like Apache’s Kafka, which can handle real time and can scale to handle big data movement at extremely low cost, and high-speed, in-memory analytics tools like SAP HANA, which makes mincemeat out of billion-row data sets. These and other new cloud-based approaches have changed the paradigm for 21st-century data analytics.
Avoiding the Creep
Robin Goldsmith
It's widely believed that creep — changes to requirements that supposedly have been settled — is due to unclear requirements. This Advisor looks at project creep differently, enabling us to see that most creep involves requirements that should and could have been identified but weren’t, and that this happens so often that it’s a certainty rather than a risk.
Automating Document Data Extraction
Shahane Eksuzyan, Sedrak Vardanyan, Raj Ramesh
This Advisor explores an intelligent system using AI technologies to automate data extraction to any one of many structured formats. The system performs minimal manual annotations to capture the semantics of specific sections for any particular document template. Once that has been done, millions of documents can be fed through the system to extract information automatically. This Advisor provides a brief look at that system.
A General Recipe for Creating Data Architectures
Olivier Pilot, Michael Papadopoulos, Michael Eiden
The role of data architects is sometimes vaguely defined and tends to fall on the shoulders of senior business analysts, data scientists, or database and ETL specialists. As with any kind of architecture, designing for uncertainty is a key requirement with data architecture.
Federated Learning’s Potential for Joint AI Development Efforts
Curt Hall
Federated learning is an emerging distributed machine learning (ML) development method that allows different organizations to collaborate on artificial intelligence (AI) projects while protecting their sensitive data. Federated learning is currently seen as especially applicable in healthcare/medicine and banking/finance; however, I believe it will prove important for many heavily regulated industries seeking to develop AI applications.
Ingredients for Enterprise Agility, Part II: Organizing and Planning for Enterprise Agility
Jon Ward
This Advisor outlines how using a target operating model working hypothesis may help C-suite executives understand how adopting Agile can impact them and their organization. The working hypothesis develops incrementally as the activity progresses. The author also suggests how to plan a transformation based upon outcomes, 90-day horizons and themes, and offers an Agile sundial as a means of setting direction and illustrating progress.
A New Look — The Automotive Industry, Post-COVID: A Q&A
Andreas Schlosser, Alan Martinovich, Philipp Seidel
In a recent webinar, Andreas Schlosser, Alan Martinovich, and Philipp Seidel examined the state of the automotive industry and what it might look like after the pandemic. They urged industry players — manufacturers, dealers, distributors, OEMs, and the full supply chain — to make bold decisions right now to be ready for a “new normal.” In this Advisor, we share some of the answers to questions participants asked about the actions carmakers should take now to set themselves up to win in the post-corona era.
5G Will Power the Next Evolutionary Step for the IoT
Agron Lasku, Hariprasad Pichai, Rebecka Axelsson Wadman, Sean McDevitt
The emergence of the IoT has led to a need for different characteristics and technical capabilities in cellular networks, which have continued to develop and will, with the emergence of 5G, address the key needs of the IoT. And with more and more “things” connected, leading to significantly higher connection density, the risk of interference increases. This has been another historical challenge to the IoT that 5G will address. All this means that 5G will enable an entirely new range of applications.
Getting Past Tradition: Expanding the Scope of EA in the Organization
Brian Cameron
While the goals of the traditional view of EA are still very valid today, this is not where the scope of EA should stop. If the EA organization wants to become a strategic partner with the business, the EA value measurement program must demonstrate that the EA team understands the key strategic metrics that the business values and can positively impact these key strategic metrics.
Next-Generation Analytics: Is it a Data Lake or a Data Mart?
Vince Kellen
The rise of cloud technologies and continued technical advances in computing architectures have dramatically altered how we design data warehouses, but we continue to see both IT staff and vendors continue to recreate the old data warehouse. As we explore in this Advisor, with the new technologies that are available, instead of having two architectures — one for data lakes and the other for data warehouses — a single “new rules” architecture can handle both.
Learning to Lead Collective Creativity, Part II: Leading So That No One Is Following
Daniel Hjorth, Robert Austin, Shannon Hessel
In creative ensembles where leadership isn’t an assigned role or position, a series of actions or behaviors enables collective creativity and can be enacted by every member of the team. In these groups, it’s imperative that every member participates in leadership actions and is prepared to take the lead at any moment.
How to Succeed with LC/NC Solutions
Greg Smith, Michael Papadopoulos, Joshua Sanz, Michael Grech, Heather Norris
To ensure success when implementing low-code/no-code solutions, companies should consider the five important priorities described in this Advisor.
Assessing the Value of EA with Metrics
Brian Cameron
This Advisor explores the critical need to assess or evaluate the value of EA through the use of metrics or measures to demonstrate the specific strategic business value that EA brings to a particular organization.
How Business Architecture Can Help Achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Q&A
Whynde Kuehn
In a recent webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Whynde Kuehn discussed how organizations can leverage business architecture to support the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This Advisor shares the Q&A session that followed.
Settlement Could Set Regulatory Precedent for Unauthorized Use of Consumer Data
Curt Hall
A recent settlement between the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and photo app developer Everalbum, Inc. could have significant repercussions for organizations developing machine learning (ML) and other artificial intelligence (AI) models using consumer data. The settlement requires Everalbum to delete the face recognition models and algorithms it allegedly developed by using photos and videos uploaded by its users.
More on Implementing Business Agility: A Q&A
Borys Stokalski, Aleksander Solecki
In a recent webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Borys Stokalski and Aleksander Solecki explored the processes and practices that support business agility from the perspectives of value innovation and product portfolio management. In this Advisor, we share the Q&A session that followed.
The Biggest Digital Transformation Risk Is Human
Noah Barsky
Digital transformation is the hottest trend and spend in technology circles these days. But how can employees possibly transform a business that they don’t fully understand?
EA Programs: Prove Your Value in Digital Transformation Efforts
Avinash Malik
In the enterprise architecture (EA) anti-pattern described in this Advisor, the EA team primarily functions to review projects in the architecture review board (ARB). Each IT project is given a series of standards that it is expected to meet, and at various checkpoints in the software development process, the project team submits a document to the ARB for review. Your enterprise architects are there to be, essentially, a “forcing function.”
3 Ways to Keep Your Options Open
Olivier Pilot, Michael Papadopoulos, Michael Eiden
While it is impossible to predict the future, the ability to adapt to what we already know is most likely to prompt a solution’s future pivot can make the difference between an elegantly evolving architecture and one that must be thrown away. In our experience, the patterns and techniques discussed in this Advisor are useful for keeping our digital and data architectures open to changes.
The Opportunities of Next-Generation Innovative Business Modeling
Zion Schum, Isaiah Morales, Roger Yin
The next generation of business and associated business models is being ushered in by blockchain’s versatility in creating and exchanging value. The opportunities are boundless, but first we must transition from our current infrastructure. Today, the data network protocols establish the rules of the Internet and facilitate its use. Most of the value these protocols create is absorbed by just a few companies — either by operating and distributing Internet access or governing the applications that make it easier to use. Only recently has blockchain emerged to offer businesses the chance to capture the value that will come from next-generation Internet protocols.
Ingredients for Enterprise Agility, Part I: The Countdown to Enterprise Agility
Jon Ward
This article is the first in a series of Advisors that will outline some of my lessons from leading Agile transformations. Getting started with Agile involves some organizational preparation; hence, the countdown to enterprise agility is the subject of this Advisor.
Digital Transformation: Shifting the Mindset from Cost to Investment
Sunny Ray, Joab Meyer, Karl Johnson
We have set out to “demystify digital transformation” through interviews with a cross-section of senior leaders at seven firms in a variety of industries. As we conduct our research, a comprehensive view of how mindsets must evolve to enable this transformation within firms is emerging. One of our most prominent initial observations centers on the digital mindsets of leaders; this mindset determines whether an organization’s digital transformation gains traction or flounders.
DevSecOps: 7 Metrics to Measure Culture Change
Kristin Curran, David Lipton, Steven Woodward
Organizational culture change is disruptive, but along with implementing a DevSecOps culture, the integrated security, and the automation, the comfort we crave is just as accessible. Communication and transparency allow DevSecOps and organizational culture change to thrive, facilitating its continued relevance and growth. But how do we measure culture change? In this Advisor, we identify a logical set of seven incremental steps to measure culture change.
Find the Sweet Spot on the Path to an “Agile Architecture”
Svyatoslav Kotusev
Instead of trying random “Agile” or “traditional” planning approaches prescribed by famous industry gurus and institutions, organizations should consciously find their “sweet spots” along the various dimensions of agility. This path will save dollars.