Chatbots and intelligent virtual assistants are receiving a lot of interest from companies across various industries wanting to add capabilities to mobile apps and popular messaging systems that will enable customers to conduct common interactions in a conversational manner via speech and natural language-text-powered interfaces. This Advisor looks at the trends and developments in this area.

Digital transformation occurs in economies, sectors, and industries. Businesses can choose to embark on a journey that makes them more than just mere observers of the transformative changes. So what happens on this journey? And how can the businesses transform?

Agile isn’t going to help if we continue applying outdated change models to how we transform; that is, a bunch of change people — either Agile coaches, change management folks, or the vendor — gather in a room and create the plan.

Inherent in the effective design of future technologies is the need for a speculative story assumed by the designers about how the future will unfold and the role that technology will play in that future world.

If we can stay focused on the intent and spirit behind the words “agile” and “architecture,” maybe we can avoid the cycle of hype and despair, at least as far as agility is concerned. This requires discipline with both words and actions because they are both part of the real world.

Self-service BI can lead to increased, widespread dissemination of BI/analytics tools and practices across the organization; in effect, helping to promote a data-driven culture. It allows employees of all types — at least in theory — to more easily locate, access, and work with a range of information and data. This is accomplished in several ways, including via highly visual, intuitive self-service BI tools and automated data preparation and workflows that provide advice on various steps of the analytical process.

In essence, a Jeopardy!-playing application posed two different problems: understanding natural language (NL) so as to be able to identify the right question and then searching a huge database of general information for an answer that fit the question. Searching a huge database quickly was a more-or-less physical problem, but parsing general questions in English and then determining which of several possible answers was the right match for the question being asked were serious cognitive problems.

The idea that an organization should change from a particular language, such as one of those named above or any of the myriad of others that may be currently in use, to find DevOps success is a slippery slope and is not necessary to implement the DevOps principle of increased deployment frequency. Any language will work well with the right principles and practices in place.

Enterprise architecture plays a growing role in strategic discussions and decision-making, and many EA components are no longer contained within a single enterprise because they form part of a much wider environmental, social, or human ecology. In other words, we are at a crucial tipping point for EA, where the decisions that enterprise architects make play a vital role in our collective destinies and futures.

“Big data” and “analytics” are among the most overhyped and abused terms in today’s IT lexicon. Despite widespread use for almost a decade, their precise meanings remain mysterious and fluid. It is beyond doubt that the volume of data being generated and gathered has been growing exponentially and will continue to do so, intuitively validating the big moniker. However, other vital characteristics of today’s data, such as structure, transience, and — most disturbingly — meaning and value, remain highly ambiguous. Analytics also remains troublingly vague, as it is prefixed with ­adjectives ranging from operational to predictive.

Interest in smartbots and intelligent virtual assistants employing AI, natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, and other cognitive techniques for automating and enhancing customer interaction and experience is increasing.

It's not an overstatement to say Lean thinking is all about customer value. Anything that does not create customer value is waste and should be eliminated.

I think I have finally have come up with a good theory to explain why there have been so many stories of government projects in trouble recently: the inhabitants of Talos IV are managing them.

Establishing a successful, sustainable business architecture practice is a journey that takes time, especially within large organizations. While there are always many ways to achieve an outcome, this Advisor shows a practical and well-tested path to accelerate the process of establishing and maturing a practice.​

The coming of age of on-demand cloud computing has led to a surge in the adoption of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) because both the benefits and economics of cloud computing are so compelling. However, the haphazard way we buy cloud resources creates a new issue around trying to manage cost without compromising on newfound business agility.

For the purpose of this article, we define context awareness as the information necessary and ­sufficient to perform the intended func­tion of the device effectively and efficiently. Typically, but not always, the context can be ascertained comprehensively by answers to some or all of what we like to call “the four Ws”: where, when, who, and what. A simple IoT device with limited functionality may only need to answer one or two Ws, while a more complex IoT device may need answers to all four, and perhaps even to additional questions such as how, why, which, how much, and so on.

Compromises are inevitable in larger transitions. After all, you’re doing an incremental journey. To figure out which of the compromises are pragmatic steps and which of them are simply in the wrong direction, you need a clear picture of the business goals behind the Agile transition.

In a recent engagement with a healthcare delivery service provider embarking on clinical trials in a digital health effort, the service provider had three specific reasons for leveraging crowdsourcing: (1) the company had very little direct contact or interactions with patients; (2) the design of the product seemed complex; and (3) the leadership team felt it to be compelling enough to solicit participants.

[From the Editor: In 2012, Senior Consultant Lee Devin wrote about industrial thinking and methods (see  "Artful and Industrial Making"). His words continue to ring true today. We share his message again here.]

Due to its ability to view an enterprise through a common lens, business architecture offers unique insights into the impact and viability of various business strategies and requirements.

One of the most sinister threats impacting data security and protection today is ransomware, which works by infiltrating an organization's systems and encrypting sensitive files and data. The data is then held for ransom by hackers who demand payment—typically in Bitcoin or some other digital currency — before they turn over the key required for its decryption.

Understanding how to become Agile starts with understanding the kind of work your organization performs.

For many practices, it’s a change in lexicon or technology that make them new “flavors,” but the underlying principles remain the same. We need to embrace our teams. We need to identify what we expect of them, and give them the tools and capacity to accomplish their goals. Read between the lines of virtually any new approach, and there should be signs of an homage to what’s been done in the past (and done well).

One characteristic of the digital economy is its enormous scale.

There are many possible collaboration opportunities companies might pursue, but for the purposes of this article, I have elaborated three healthcare-related scenarios. The first involves using information within the personal cloud as a way to monitor conditions and trigger certain actions. The second looks for new ways to collaborate by sharing information in the course of a particular care encounter. The last is a common scenario in healthcare where either historical data or enhanced information is sought for research purposes.