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Top Intriguing Cutter Business Technology Journal Articles for 2020
Karen Coburn
This Advisor takes a look at the most intriguing articles of 2020 from the Cutter Business Technology Journal.
Top Intriguing Business & Enterprise Architecture Articles for 2020
Karen Coburn
As has been our tradition for the last several years, we’ve compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Business & Enterprise Architecture practice for today’s Advisor. How did we come up with this list? We chose the articles that garnered the most feedback from Cutter Members. Your questions and comments not only make it possible to create lists like this, they help focus Cutter’s Senior Consultants’ research on the areas that are most important to organizations like yours. So please keep your feedback coming.
Top Intriguing Data Analytics & Digital Technologies Articles for 2020
Karen Coburn
As has been our tradition for the last several years, we’ve compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Data Analytics & Digital Technologies practice this year for today’s Advisor. How did we come up with this list? We chose the articles that garnered the most feedback from Cutter Members and clients and those that created controversy among Cutter Senior Consultants and Fellows.
IT Development as a Production Line? A Q&A
Jon Ward
In a recent webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Jon Ward explained how shifting to IT development production lines, managed in the same way as car manufacturers manage their vehicle production processes, can improve delivery in an organization. In this Advisor, we share some of the answers to questions participants asked about how the concept of an IT development production line enables organizational learning and greater delivery efficiency.
What’s the Holdup? Digitization in the Financial Services Industry
Bhavik Pathak
The information-dominant financial services (FS) industry has witnessed fractional, fragmented, and transactional digitization compared to entertainment, transportation, travel, lodging, and retail. The FS industry is heavily regulated, consolidated, and has already-built digital capabilities; while the fintech pure plays have shown efficiency, many are built on the same business models as the traditional FS businesses. Thus, a genuinely disruptive model challenging the prominent incumbents of the FS industry has not yet emerged.
Measuring Culture Change for Successful DevSecOps Implementation
Kristin Curran, David Lipton, Steven Woodward
How does one measure culture? How can measures and metrics be used to influence positive culture change? Cultural measurement needs to focus on evaluating outcomes and processes that reflect behavior change. Two major types of measures that provide valuable perspectives are business outcome and enabling metrics, and we can apply both measurement types to culture change.
How Would an Industry Reference Model Help Me?
Serge Thorn
My previous Advisors referred to the use of business capability modeling and heat maps to better focus on business areas that require attention for an IT rationalization. In this Advisor, I expand on the use of reference models, what they are, and why to consider them.
Big Data, ML, and Geo Mapping for Real-Time Traffic Monitoring and Analysis
Curt Hall
Increasingly, government agencies, businesses, universities, and other organizations are working together to build AI systems that analyze geo-mapped and other location-based data. One such impressive new ML application uses Uber driver data to track and alleviate urban traffic congestion. It is designed to give urban transportation analysts and traffic engineers access to information about city traffic patterns in order to relieve bottlenecks, chokepoints and other problems.
Navigating Workplace Employment Toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Ebonye Gussine Wilkins
Even when responses to diversity, equity, and inclusion disparities are obligatory, we’re still missing the mark. Truth is, we have most of the pieces. We’re not applying the knowledge that we have, which is why we’re missing the big picture. This Advisor considers how businesses navigate employment.
Exploring the Boundaries of Automation in Software
Erik Fogg
One of the key advances in software development in recent years has been the automation of many tasks and services. Contemporary software automation goes far beyond simple task runners and is now beginning to augment artificial intelligence and machine learning into the process, which further widens the scope of what can be automated. However, not all tasks in software development are well suited to automation, and not all tasks should be automated. Where do you draw the line, and where is software automation most useful for developers?
Leveraging Business Architecture for Global Change
Whynde Kuehn
While every UN member state should use the SDGs for framing their agendas and political policies, the responsibility and potential for meeting these goals also lies with every individual and organization. This includes governments, non-profit organizations, and even for-profit businesses, which can be a powerful mechanism for change.
Take a Look at 4 Layers of Data Architecture and Data Quality
Rich Huebner
It takes a lot more than rugged and hardened data architecture to ensure data quality. One way of thinking about data quality issues as they relate to data architecture is to examine and address them through a layered approach described in this Advisor.
Pandemic Disruptions: Financial Services Respond
Bhavik Pathak
The unemployment and income instability caused by COVID-19 has resulted in many people having difficulty meeting their credit obligations and many industries struggling to run their operations. Worldwide, governments and businesses have taken steps with exceptional speed to match this pandemic‘s unprecedented nature.
Tools to Use: How an Annual Report Can Offer Clues to Risk
Noah Barsky
Often overlooked as financial filings to meet regulatory requirements, company annual reports provide an endless well of insight about how and how well companies articulate and integrate business strategy with risk management and performance measurement.
The Agile Digital Culture
Jon Ward
Unless an organization pursues a strategy of innovation for its own sake, then digital era products and services are still subject to the marketing lifecycle with profitability and reward appearing in the market growth and maturity stages. This means that organizations need to create structures and a culture within which they can simultaneously innovate and deliver the new inventions. There needs to be a marriage of innovation expense control and revenue generation. So how does a modern leader engender such a culture?
Pandemic or Not, Automation Is More Necessary Than Ever
Curt Hall
In this Advisor, we take a look at how COVID-19 is affecting automation efforts, based on findings from an ongoing Cutter Consortium survey on intelligent process automation.
Drawn from Nature: 9 Properties of Complex Adaptive Systems as a Tool for Change
Roger Sweetman, Kieran Conboy
In nature, apparently robust systems can be disrupted by a single new invasive species, while other systems can retain their resilience despite a sustained assault. The behavior of such systems can be explained by the interdisciplinary theory of complex adaptive systems (CAS). This Advisor describes how we can use CAS theory to support organizational change.
How Do We Pay for That? Budgeting Trends for IPA in the Enterprise
Curt Hall
Our findings indicate that 2021 looks to be the year that organizations really get serious with their IPA efforts. Consequently, we should expect to see more organizations move beyond the experimentation stages and start developing and deploying new IPA applications into production environments.
Driving Change: A Case Study in Banking
Jagdish Bhandarkar, Namratha Rao
Many classic change management models fail to consider the significant dimensions of technology and innovation. This Advisor shares a case study involving a bank that developed key performance indicators to track all dimensions of change, enabling the bank to constantly improve its capability to implement change.
Fintech: COVID-19 Impact & Opportunities for Economic Growth — An Introduction
Kevin O'Leary, Philip O'Reilly
In this issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal (CBTJ), we examine the role that fintech will play in facilitating economic recovery and growth.
Using Heat Maps to Better Drive the Rationalization of Your IT Landscape, Part II
Serge Thorn
In my last Advisor, “Using Heat Maps to Better Drive the Rationalization of Your IT Landscape,” I introduced the use of business capability heat maps to better focus on business areas that require attention. This Advisor further illustrates the approach and offers next steps in sharing your organization’s evolution with stakeholders.
Reskilling and Retraining During and After COVID-19
Cui Zou, Wangchuchu Zhao, Keng Siau
A “next normal” is undoubtedly going to emerge once the COVID-19 pandemic slows down or resolves. But while the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the economy and work routines, it also provides opportunities for organizations to implement continuous learning and make progress toward upskilling and reskilling employees.
The Treasure Chest at the Nexus of Strategy, Risk, and Performance
Noah Barsky
While strategy, risk, and metrics coexist tangentially in many organizations, the nexus of the three reflects the degree to which management thinks and acts proactively.
Mastering Strategic Capability Management
Carlos Mira, Juan Gonzalez, Gregory Pankert, Florence Carlot, Rafael Martínez
Businesses have traditionally organized themselves to ensure optimal effectiveness in each of their business functions. In today’s business climate, however, shorter product lifecycles, demand for customization, rising consumer expectations, and the growth of automation and data challenge this model. This Advisor describes the building blocks of generic capabilities and describes three categories of capability-based players seeking competitive advantage.
What Is the Chief Scientist’s Role in Research and Technology Organizations?
Gonzalo Libano, Ben Thuriaux, Philip Webster
The chief scientific officer — or CSO — plays a key role in research and technology organizations (RTOs), ensuring scientific leadership, setting medium- to long-term strategy, and influencing scientific investment, among other roles. In a recent study, Arthur D. Little (ADL) set out to understand the full scope of the CSO position in RTOs across the globe.