We all, unconsciously, seek out others who have a style similar to our own, and we can all tell, again unconsciously, who has such a style and who doesn’t. Having the knowledge to predict the interaction problems we may encounter with other people provides us with a basis for improving the quality of our interactions. This improvement in our “situational awareness” gives us the ability to better control the outcomes of our interactions with others.

Blockchain (in its current and future iterations) will certainly impact various industries and governmental applications. But we will likely derive additional oppor­tunity and value from the convergence of block­chain with other emerging technologies. Data currently created and available from IoT devices, for instance, may very well benefit from some variant of blockchain. Capturing informa­tion from trusted devices and storing it in a distributed model accessible for monitoring and real-time analysis for use by AI packages could dramatically alter the speed and quality of delivery of services and/or reaction.

Product development is challenging for both business people and engineers; one challenge is knowing which features to add and when to stop adding more features. Iterative development solves this problem. With short and repeated development cycles, the product grows. This Advisor seeks to demystify a common myth that surrounds Agile product development: the myth that only the most complete feature set will do. 

The need for efficiency in business is more imperative now than ever; we need to do more with less money, less time, and fewer resources. Yet business must also meet the needs of increasingly demanding customers who now expect 24/7 service. In this environment, businesses must consider automating tasks not only to meet increasing demands but to free up human staff to take on more strategically valuable and fulfilling tasks. Robotic process automation (RPA) can thus take on the repetitive, “non-value-adding,” laborious tasks by manipulating data and triggering actions with other software systems. In this Advisor, we explore how RPA is benefiting a number of verticals.

Cutter Consortium conducted a survey from early to mid-2018 on how organizations are adopting, or planning to adopt, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. In this Advisor, we look at two use cases that responding organizations view as most viable for applying AI: customer-facing self-service advisory systems and employee-facing internal advisory systems. 

Viewing an enterprise as an assembly of various architectures and building blocks allows the development of a coherent vision of how an organization can build the required capabilities to meet anticipated changes in its environment. Enterprise architecture, in particular, helps provide guidance and communicates how the company needs to change to survive. EA brings a shift in focus from technical systems to designing coherent sociotechnical systems that meet strategic requirements and organizational needs, such as those around workforce development, culture, structure, and processes. This Advisor introduces the Service Dominant Architecture (SDA) as a tool to support the digiti­zation of companies by structuring actors and their resources and reducing overall complexity.

For most organizations implementing customer experience (CX) management practices, it is still too early to tell if their efforts are actually paying off. This finding comes from the preliminary results of Cutter's ongoing CX management survey. This Advisor explores this finding and others and discusses why organizations are still waiting to realize measurable benefits from their initiatives.

In this Advisor, the author recommends, based on his personal experience, five key design topics to consider in rolling out scalable robotic process automation solutions. Above all, business stakeholders will expect attention to detail when it comes to robots that operate with live financial, customer, employee, and other corporate data.

In today’s business world, there have been significant changes in two basic dimensions in which companies operate: (1) there is an unparalleled requirement to consider potential extensions to the scope of the business (space); and (2) there is a huge acceleration in the required pace of the business (time). This Advisor explores the forces behind space extension and time acceleration.

This Advisor looks at a company that wanted to add capabilities to continuously drive disruptive new business model innovations. The aim was to add and enhance the organization’s operational experience with emotional connections to customers who were new to the business. It codified this ambition in a set of target values and behavior characteristics, translating them into its corporate language and specific needs.

Antifragile Systems Design requires an organization to move as one toward solving the problem of complexity, which means changing the perspective from “us versus them” (IT versus business) to simply “us” (business). The steps outlined in this Advisor require a mix of skills within business, business architecture, and software engineering. However, this is not simply a business activity or a software design activity and cannot be divided into different tasks for different silos; each step in the process creates feedback loops to ensure that answers arrived at are coherent. Business leaders, business/enterprise architects, and software architects all need to engage with the process to make it work. 

Shortfalls in the risk management approaches many companies currently take can leave them dangerously exposed. These companies either have no corporate-level mechanisms for monitoring and acting on risk exposure or gather potentially relevant data but fail to develop appropriate metrics to support effective monitoring, control, and timely remediation. These metrics can take the form of key risk indicators (KRIs), which all levels of management can use to provide evidence of the effectiveness of the implemented risk management strategies. In this Advisor, we share some features of effective KRI implementation.

Digital technology has a major role to play in the organizations of the future, but in order to reap the full benefits of these new technologies, organizations must continue to evolve on a daily basis. In this Advisor, we identify four strategic imperatives for organizations to consider as they continue on their journey to achieve a new digital norm, in which the focus moves beyond tactical cost reduction or operational enhancement toward the holistic enhancement of value propositions.

Co-creating value-added services requires new technical capabilities, mostly enabled by new digital technologies. Thus, interconnectivity, scalability, modularity, and interoperability are key building blocks of platforms and, consequently, need to be viewed as new design imperatives aiming at the effective reuse and integration of technical functions (e.g., authorization or display functionalities). Reuse and integration especially require new capabilities. In this context, the inside-out and outside-in openness of platforms play a key role and become a strategic mandate.

We have done reasonably well, evolving the architecture discipline over the last couple of decades to a point where we are generally able to align the architecture foundation’s progress with a system’s progress. However, a system is only one piece in the system of systems: the enterprise, as it evolves over time. We may win the battle in the finite game of a single capability. But do we have the staying power to win in the infinite game that enterprises must play in? That is the key question that this Advisor raises.

We hope the articles in this Cutter Business Technology Journal issue present perspectives and ideas on a few key aspects of smart automation and that you find the articles interesting, insightful, and practical. We also hope they inspire you to harness the innovations pushing the next frontiers in automation.

In the future, and as the technology advances, corporate, government, and military leaders will increasingly turn to advanced AI advisory systems to assist them with business strategy development. Such advanced AI advisory systems will likely function in the form of some kind of assistant. In this Advisor, IBM’s Project Debater application offers some insight into how such an advanced AI advisory system might function.

When I worked with the Air Force years ago, they had a requirement for every program to capture lessons learned when the product was delivered. The programs that I worked with faithfully carried out this mandate and developed reams of reports that were compiled as lessons learned databases. Unfortunately, there was no requirement to review these databases in anticipation of new starts or to make policy/procedure corrections. As a result, the suggestions and experience that they contained was often lost. Let’s see what we can do to fix this at each of the levels of retrospective.

It is little wonder that banking and financial services rank at the very top today among the industries AI will impact greatly, according to findings from a recent Cutter Consortium survey examining the adoption and application of AI technology in the enterprise. This Advisor explores the various trends and industry developments that are driving AI adoption in banking and finance.

When approaching an architecture representation, a key point is its decomposition into elements, usually leading to a containment-based representation structure. We might then navigate the architecture along the “containing” relations (for example, whenever a link is labeled as “part of” or “implements,” it is a “containing relation” by nature), or using predefined viewpoints. To reach the ideal balance in governing architecture, the challenge is to harmonize the intentional and the emergent architectures.

“Know your customer” (KYC), a key process for banks today, remains, in most cases, a very costly and long process. Most challenges lie in the efficiency of verifying customer-provided information. With digitally verified claims, verification can be improved, accelerated, and replicated on a large scale. KYC and digitally verified claims open new business opportunities for banks to act as validators for other organizations. This Advisor explores two case studies of KYC implementation.

As with any new technology, there are numerous myths about robotic process automation (RPA). The most prominent myth — the one that has created fear among the modern workforce — is that RPA will replace humans. This myth does not hold true; RPA implementation actually works toward the betterment of the workforce and workplaces.

Although some jobs will disappear during the AI transformation, AI was not created to eliminate jobs but to automate mundane or time-consuming tasks. This will complement and empower humans to be more effective and efficient at jobs that require human insights and judgment. Organizations that fail to pay attention to the AI digital transformation are putting themselves at risk. Employees need to understand this reality and view this required personal transformation as an opportunity to grow and tackle new opportunities. Today it is no longer a matter of what you know, but how fast you can learn and adapt.

One of the techniques people in the Agile community argue for is retrospectives. A retrospective refers to a meeting held at the end of an iteration where teammates reflect on what they experienced and recommend improvements. It is an important tool because it allows the team to take advantage of their lessons learned. The bottom line is that organizations need to put processes in place to facilitate sharing. Besides being easy to use, developers need to be motivated to use these processes, or else the databases that are provided will remain unused.

Architecture stories are important to articulate so they gain visibility. For example, if you have a feature idea that you think a user would value, you might define a minimum viable product for it and whip up a quick/cheap prototype before making a final implementation decision. If the feedback isn’t positive, then you’d quickly pivot in another direction. The point is that I want the same level of thoughtful planning to occur for architecture as for features.