When an organization decides to structure the teams that look after its digital products and platforms into feature teams, the technology stack must closely follow that structure. Most organizations, however, do not structure their technology stacks in this way, and the challenges that we observe today when trying to make changes at speed are usually attributable to that misalignment.

In this Advisor, we introduce the potential ethical issues in Industry 4.0 and look at these from two aspects: (1) ethical issues related to data and (2) ethical issues related to systems, technology products, and services.

Most organizations will start with a shell of an IRP and then start filling in the operational details. Typically, this effort begins with a security incident where the response goes horribly wrong. In this Advisor, we describe some of the task areas that add the most value to an organization.

The IT skills shortage has been around long enough for some to have proposed solutions. Will these ideas work for Industry 4.0? In this Advisor, we explore some past approaches to the skills crisis and see if we can glean any lessons from them.

The most sought-after technologies that surveyed organizations are interested in adopting to support their CX initiatives are customer analytics and customer behavioral modeling. Our research also finds considerable interest from responding organizations in using personalization to target content and promotions by audience.

The cognitive enterprise offers a business-driven vision for organizations where technology is merely a means to an end. This Advisor explores some common scenarios that manifest within a cognitive enterprise.

Currently, organizational interest in adopting game design and gaming techniques to support customer experience (CX) initiatives is limited; however, the concepts are quite applicable to CX practices.

While the world is enjoying the benefits of the fourth industrial revolution, the risks to businesses from cyber threats are increasing in both sophistication and frequency. What can business leaders do to strengthen their resilience to cyber threats? Leaders must first recognize that the risks in the digital space present as real a threat to the success of the business as do the more familiar risks in the physical world. To build effective digital resilience, leaders must adopt a C-suite response, embracing both robust technology and organizational culture approaches.

The right team is key to crafting software systems capable of supporting innovation. Software delivery talent, however, is extremely difficult to find for a multitude of reasons, which we explore in this Advisor.

This issue of CBTJ looks at three previous AI "waves" and helps us to get up to speed with the current state of AI and to think about some of the issues raised when we look beyond systems that appear to work as intended. 

Given the distributed nature and the potential uncertainty of the elements contained in any blockchain event, validation is an essential component. In this Advisor, we discuss how blockchain could improve trust in, and dependability of, the business process under automation.

In this Advisor, we examine the three conventional essential security requirements — confidentiality, integrity, and availability — which present somewhat different issues in the age of Industry 4.0.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based cybersecurity solutions offer significant advantages with respect to threat detection, response time, and, most important, reduction in false positive alerts.

Many aspects of software have changed in the last few decades, particularly since the advent of personal computers in the 1980s, the World Wide Web in the 1990s, and the widespread use of mobile and cloud computing in the last decade or so. Other key changes have been the massive trend toward outsourcing and offshoring in the 2000s and the widespread use of social media beginning in the 2010s. We explore some of these trends in this Advisor.

Recently, we described the application of Scrum at Riccardo’s Restaurant in London. This environment is similar to that of Lean hardware Scrum, in that shifts are repeatedly creating and delivering products in short cycles with high quality. Process efficiency and cycle time become the key metrics for production.

Digital transformation has hit a wall. The need for reinventing how we think about and approach archi­tecture is becoming ever more prevalent, especially if an organization is to truly become Agile.

It’s clear that organizations are going to have to extend their enterprise data protection practices to be more transparent and flexible if they hope to comply with the various (changing) requirements of data protection and privacy legislation.

Cybersecurity incidents lead to huge loss or severe damage to industrial assets. To mitigate cybersecurity threats, it is essential to understand the cycle of infor­ma­tion security governance and control: preparation, prevention, detection, response, and learning. This Advisor closely examines the security management cycle.

Digital transformation is not an end point; it is just a beginning. By going digital, your organization is only entering the game. In this Advisor, we share some laws of software evolution and the market forces at play.

The communication to design teams of new information that causes rework results in design oscillations. Since knowledge about how to complete a project is incrementally “consumed” by team members, design osc­illations are a natural metabolic byproduct of knowledge-foraging behavior. Design oscillations represent the key engine of the project metabolism. The problem lies in the timing of and team cooperation in synchronization of efforts related to design oscillations. 

It may be my narrow experience, but most Agile teams I encounter develop few to no diagrams or high-level views of the architecture they’re implementing. Instead, they allude to “being Agile,” where architectural docu­mentation is unnecessary, which implies that you simply collaborate around the code and magic (emergent architecture) occurs. In this Advisor, I suggest documentation as a good tool for striking the right balance between architecture and agility.

Despite the emphasis on and investment in cyber security, traditional approaches are failing to protect businesses and their customers. In this Advisor, we explore the benefits of adopting a new, unified approach that brings together technology and risk management processes, enabling organizations to better protect themselves against cyber threats and safeguarding their businesses, data, and revenues.

To some extent, pursuit of new technologies without a clear problem-to-be-solved is natural for basic research, such as for developing new materials. For applied R&D, defining the need to be met is essential, yet many times teams are not able to begin with a clear understanding of the user’s problem. Integrating the end customer into the team would clearly be ideal, but this is often not possible in large industrial development work (for software and non-software teams). So what’s a team to do to span the gap between its work and the customer market?

In this Advisor, we explore some of the areas in which specific Industry 4.0 technologies can create advances within regulated industries.

In 2011, the developer of the Netscape browser and cofounder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz stated that “software is eating the world.” I remember thinking at the time that this was a memorable aphorism, but while it captured the increasing importance of software, it seemed somewhat cryptic or vague. Little did I realize that, over the next 10 or so years, it would come to articulate a profound transformation of the world we live in and, especially, the enterprises we lead and operate within.