With so many variants of the core components of the blockchain definition — like validation, distribution, opportunities, and challenges — it becomes clear that exec­utives may need a matrix or rubric to decide if/how to adopt blockchain based on industry and objectives. Even if your company is not considering automating processes via blockchain, your competitors may be doing so, and government entities may even force your hand. Therefore, it is important to start the internal discussion now. In this Advisor, we’ve shared some questions to help your organization quickly engage in deep discussions.

We are now in the “post-Agile” age. In this Advisor, we introduce some of the cutting-edge ideas from the Agile community featured in this month's CBTJ, including Heart of Agile, Modern Agile, the GROWS Method™, BOSSA nova, and solutions-focused thinking. This issue also digs further into stories of politics in Zimbabwe, entrepreneurship in Pakistan, and running “agile classrooms” in several countries.

Industry proponents have been pushing the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) is set to have a major impact on customer experience (CX) practices. But how do end-user organizations feel about AI’s potential for facilitating CX? After all, they are the ones who will or will not utilize the technology. In this Advisor, we share some initial results from our ongoing CX management survey offer some insight into organizations’ attitudes toward AI’s potential impact on CX practices.

Finding the right approach for effective serial breakthrough innovation has become the holy grail for today’s companies. However, our survey shows that there is still a long way to go before companies’ efforts match their aspirations. Although nearly 90% of companies recognized the importance of defining specific strategic objectives for breakthrough innovation, only about half of them currently do so. Those that do define specific breakthrough objectives and goals are, on average, nearly four times more satisfied with the results than those that do not, and the more explicit the goals are, the higher the success rate. While there is no single formula for success, it is clear that there are some important key factors. In this Advisor, we share some of those key factors as well as four organizational models that have proven effective in different situations.

The challenge of digitalization (which is the main disruptive force pushing enterprise Agile transformation) requires companies to acknowledge that the rate of learning is more important than the return on investment. So the ability to produce continuous learning is today’s main currency. In this Advisor, we share some thoughts on encouraging a scientific approach to ensuring continuous, long-term learning and improvement.

Design thinking provides a structured approach to uncover the human factors in smart automation. It is also important to understand the design considerations involved. We explore those as well as the systems/technology and business processes involved in this Advisor.

The ability to effectively and efficiently digitalize an organization’s value stream is, unquestionably, a source of future competitive advantage. Identifying and integrating the most appropriate digital technologies into the value stream requires a profound understanding of all related business processes, as well as a sound understanding of what the technologies offer and their relative maturity. To achieve success and overcome traditional barriers, companies need to ensure that Lean principles are well integrated into their digital transformation. To do so, and to fully exploit their digital potential, companies should perform the four actions described in this Advisor.

Many organizations are now focusing on a hybrid cloud strategy: moving part of their IT capabilities to the cloud, while maintaining core elements in-house, hosted on-premises. The hybrid model is becoming immensely customary among orga­nizations, as it enables them to optimally allocate their resources while keeping their current IT infrastructure operating at low risk. A hybrid cloud strategy not only prepares an organization for the future but also protects its investment today. In this Advisor, we explore the benefits of a hybrid cloud strategy.

A major consideration in this world of complex­ity of choice is to figure out how to achieve business agility at scale. This Advisor discusses using a framework to achieve that.

Change often creates challenges. Inherent in many challenges are one or more oppor­tunities. Resolving challenges associated with implementing decision automation and sensors can help identify opportunities for digital transformation and operations renewal. As we explore in this Advisor, managers must assess what is needed, what is cost-effective, and what is most useful with new decision automation technologies.

The growth of automated and cognitive systems drives the need for more expressive and adaptive forms of metadata to enable and underpin such AI, which, in turn, raises questions about the traditional role of such metadata components as the data catalog, the business vocabulary, and the data model. This Advisor explores the data warehouse’s evolving role in digital business.

We believe that Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon is a useful metaphor in describing the challenge of rolling out an innovation that fundamentally changes the way an organization works. An important (and often fancy) transformational concept successfully tried on a small scale, in some kind of sandbox environment, is to be implemented through a large-scale change effort, engaging many new stakeholders. Achieving truly transform­ative changes means reevaluating skills as well as shifts in priorities, resources, and power. 

One important indicator of just how far along in the adoption cycle a new technology (or practice) is depends on whether organizations have developed detailed plans or roadmaps for its adoption and dissemination across the organization. In this Advisor, we share some preliminary results from our ongoing customer experience (CX) management survey that offer some insight into current and future trends pertaining to the establishment of enterprise CX strategy plans.

As I explore in this Advisor, I believe we are going to witness a major migration to a new spectrum of ecosystem-centric businesses that are not customer first, company first, or employee first, but are instead ecosystem first, which is a new thing altogether.

We have found the keys to using Agile methods in firmware development to be focus, flexibility, collabo­ration, tools, and teamwork. In addition, all participants (customers, product managers and owners, systems engineers, digital designers, hardware and software engineers) need to embrace the approach and work together as a team to get the job done as rapidly as possible. In this Advisor, we explore seven major issues that may come up during the product development cycle while putting Agile methods into action.

In digital businesses, fragmentation is a design decision to deal with the fluidity of the business processes and business boundaries. It’s important to understanding the consequences in terms of the energy it takes to keep information con­sistent across a fragmented data landscape. Once you can accept that the beastly nature of working with information is created by your own actions and is an inherent part of the collaboration process that makes information work for you, you can finally start to for­mulate solutions.

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.