According to a recent Cutter Consortium survey, approximately a quarter of organizations are looking into using smartbots and intelligent assistants for their customer experience initiatives. Intelligent agents and smartbots enable customers to conduct common interactions in a conversational manner via speech and natural language speech or text-powered interfaces.

Robotics has benefited considerably over the past two years from advances in AI, with the biggest stemming from developments around deep learning neural net architectures and machine vision systems. Consequently, today we are seeing robots employing advanced autonomous navigation and intelligent object recognition capabilities — including image-sensing functions utilizing advanced pattern matching, shape detection, and face-tracking and analysis.

When using Agile methods, the integration and testing effort is performed continuously since capability is built up and delivered in short iterations. In order to implement continuous integration and testing concepts, consider the seven Agile approaches examined in this Advisor.

Working with blockchain over the past few years has made me realize the broad possibilities of distributed networks. Certainly, one could say that blockchain is “just” a distributed database; however, emerging adoption reinforces the potential underneath. There are myriad ways to adopt this technology, including in transferring funds, managing supply chains, handling tax evasion, and performing targeted analyses of data already recorded on the blockchain.

A capability architecture defines what we are and do at any given time, whereas process, information, platform, and other architectures describe how we accomplish what we are or perform what we do at any given time. As we improve or mature, what we do and/or how we do it changes over time, meaning that both our capabilities and the enabling architectures evolve.

As we explore in this issue of Cutter Business Techology Journal, blockchain is a smart but still small baby only just beginning the process of becoming an adult. The next two to three years will be important in terms of implementing proper regulations and standards to enable wider adoption of blockchain and to establish the technology on a solid legal foundation.

Today we are seeing a growing interest in the customer-centric business model among organizations that have come to see such models as a practical way to support a standard customer experience across all their various channels and brands.

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we’ve compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Business Agility & Software Engineering Excellence 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.

We’ve compiled the five most intriguing articles published by Business Technology & Digital Transformation Strategies in 2019 for today’s Advisor.

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.

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we’ve compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Cutter Business Technology Journal 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.

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.

The expectations end users have of software today are significantly different than those they had just a few years ago. This Advisor examine three implications of these rising expectations.

This Advisor explores three major disciplines that “Good to great” organizations follow to govern their portfolio and examines practices that enable organi­zations to keep the digital train moving with minimal friction, cost, and effort.

To realize value in big data, organizations must establish a proper quality function around the unique characteristics of big data.This Advisor explores five strategic considerations in developing a quality environment in a big data initiative.

We have a growing body of evidence that points us to what makes a business architecture team successful. In this Advisor, we share a few characteristics that encapsulate how successful business architecture practitioners think and act.

Internet of Things (IoT) applications — including connected products and services in general, and remote condition-based monitoring and predictive maintenance in particular — offer considerable opportunities for companies to provide a better customer experience (CX) via real-time customer service and support.

Artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, at its core, must closely align with a company’s business objectives, ensuring synergy between the corporate strategy and the AI strategy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are technologies that can solve problems and do a world of good. But we must not forget that they are fallible and require human oversight. AI/ML developers must adhere to a strong code of ethics and employ ethicists to audit new applications. They must also ensure valid and reliable data testing and remain vigilant to the possibility that the technology may not work as intended.

Based on recent findings from a Cutter Consortium survey on customer experience (CX) management in the enterprise, most organizations appear to have somewhat guarded expectations of artifical intelligence’s potential to influence CX.

A business architecture initiative such as business capability modeling can be a challenging endeavor in many organizations. Typically, little clarity exists as to what a business capability is, what business capabilities are used for, and why a business needs them. The challenge is to address these concerns while succinctly articulating why adopting business capability modeling is a good idea.

Examples of unintended consequences abound in government and the social sciences, but also occur in engineering, business, management, IT governance, and other areas. In this Advisor, we explore some examples.

Design thinking helps companies identify real issues they never knew existed and leads to innovative digital and non-digital solutions never before imagined.

Digital transformation is not an end point; it is just a beginning. It is imperative to continuously evolve your digital solutions to keep meeting the needs of your users and your market.

This Advisor looks at two fundamental project metrics that everyone uses at all levels in the IT organization: size and flow.