At a conference in Monaco, James Dow, VP Global Engineering at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) stated that the banking sector now regards technology companies as serious competitors in the finance industry. Dow further pointed out that several US technology companies were each in a position to purchase the entire shareholding of multiple major banks in all-cash transactions.

What is true with financial models is even truer with enterprise models that are even more abstract and expansive in their scope. The point is that it is all too easy to create poorly thought-out models that shine radiantly as PowerPoint slides, Visio diagrams, and financial spreadsheets, but which mislead. It takes time and a labor of love to design views that are less about emotional appeal and aesthetics than they are about representing truths that are sometimes ugly, but always revealing.

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises companies many benefits from connecting products and services. But once you start examining the requirements of the connected device ecosystem, it soon becomes apparent that implementing and managing IoT products and their supporting infrastructure is a complex undertaking.

I'm afraid that some of the superficial approaches to "Agile" and "lightweight methods" have put design, planning, and software tools in a bad light.

Scrum is not about planning! It is also not about story points nor sprint commitment nor backlog grooming. Scrum is about delivery in the first place, and about learning in the second.

Measurement is not a new concept. We deal with measurement in some form or another in our daily lives. When talking about metrics for business processes, we can sum up the concept with this well-known statement: "You cannot manage what you cannot measure. And you cannot improve something that you cannot manage properly."

We are regularly asked about the likely timing and impact of SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) technologies on IT outsourcing. Taking a broad view, we predict that SMAC, in combination with advanced robotics, the Internet of Things, and the automation of knowledge work, will lead to organizations becoming fundamentally digital operations as cloud corporations by 2025. How do these developments affect outsourcing over the next five years? Will these disruptive technologies change outsourcing as we know it?

Privacy is about to collide with big data. We are seeing some of the opening moves in different areas across the globe. In Europe, Google Maps has been criticized for portraying unauthorized images of people in street views. More recently in the US, we have seen the collapse of talks about use of facial recognition, where privacy advocate groups walked out of regulatory discussions because companies refused to acknowledge a need for prior permission if images were to be used for this purpose.

While all the trappings of my hometown are largely still there -- the park, the DQ, the cinema on the square -- none of them are run the same way or operate the way they did when I was young. As our enterprises flourish, we need to realize that there are inherently some operational aspects that will neither require nor get our personal touch. It doesn't mean they aren't functioning. It means that they are functioning without our oversight. As such, they will evolve organically to some degree.

We work in business environments where the focus is often mainly on quickly achieving results. In many companies, making a group decision can create long debates that can rage on extensively for the sake of making the perfect decision and not making a mistake.

When it comes to IoT applications, high-performance analytic databases typically serve to handle in-depth analytic processing needs -- especially applications that require combining machine data analysis with other forms of enterprise data analysis (e.g., billing, customer profiles, mobile usage) to support comprehensive analytic requirements.

Having great ideas is wonderful. Selling them to others so they get implemented is even better. No matter where you are in the IT organization, think of the people you interact with as your customers and engage in a sales process with them to promote your ideas. As the leader of an IT organization, develop a sales mindset within your workforce. The cornerstone of this mindset is to start regarding all the people your team works with as customers and to focus on those customers' needs.

The impact of robotics is hot in current debates, but this must be seen within a larger context and on a longer time horizon. Automation, involving all the SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) technologies, and not just from robotics, may have the biggest impact of all, both on outsourcing and on its character. One of the reasons automation is compelling is the rapid decline in the cost of computing relative to the cost of labor.

The recent Cutter Summit 2015 presented many enlightening and inspiring presentations, including the "lightning talks," in which 12 participants spent five minutes each describing a current noteworthy development or result. Very impressive. This was after Cutter Fellow Steve Andriole encouraged us to review our resumes, as he described the imminent demise of the IT organization in most enterprises. This situation evolves through recent technology developments and organizational patterns, such as cloud.

There's managing the project, then there is managing the project with the future in mind. By that I don't mean, "What can I up sell to the client to make him come back for another project?" We should already be doing that to some degree, though trying not be too obvious about it. Our organizations are already looking to us as salespeople: looking for change orders, suggesting areas where other products or capabilities of our companies can help the project customer out. If you are a consultant like me, you are likely doing this all the time -- probably even in your sleep.

Business architecture confronts head-on the issue of business and technology strategic alignment and takes the proverbial bull by its horns.

Digital business requires change across a very wide range of areas. There is an increasing use of storage, vastly expanded networking requirements, and a rise in the virtualization of all equipment. Digital systems deployed on the network can be replicated, modeled, and situated anywhere, so we have seen virtual networks, virtual servers, virtual mobile solutions, and virtual workstations of all types.

Smart clothing utilizes textile sensors embedded directly within their fabrics. This allows such garments to function as biometric data-gathering devices. Examples include shirts, sports bras, gloves, smart socks, and shoes that can capture and relay information from the wearer -- such as heart rate, perspiration, respiration, grip, running form, fitness levels, and more. The data is typically transmitted wirelessly to a smartphone to provide direct feedback to the wearer, and to a cloud platform for applying machine learning (ML) and other analytics in order to generate behavioral feedback.

Recently, there was a significant "news buzz" when Chris Roberts, a computer security researcher, was removed from an airplane after tweeting comments about the ability to access "critical" aircraft data via an underseat passenger connection available at each seat. These connections were intended to allow passengers to access the Internet and other harmless flight information. But Roberts, being a security expert, says that he has been able to access functions, like deploying the oxygen masks that might panic passengers and endanger a flight.

Development and operations groups play equally important roles and must synchronize their work to enable organizations to rapidly produce software products and services. The awareness of this has resulted in the development of the operating principles known as "DevOps."

Enterprises, under constant pressure to marshal finite resources, are understandably selective about investments, and must choose wisely between candidate investments with different rewards and unequal risk profiles. This Advisor starts from the position that architecture too should be viewed as an organizational investment, and responsibly managed as one. To be able to do that effectively, we need to get our arms around the value of architecture.

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Cutter Senior Consultant San Murugesan's introduction to the May 2015 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Software Infrastructure Management Strategies" (Vol. 28, No. 5). Learn more about Cutter IT Journal.]

I know of several projects under way utilizing sensors, analytics, and mobile technologies to optimize rail operations by collecting and analyzing operational data to determine real-time vehicle location and operating factors such as average acceleration, speed, idle times, number of stops, driver performance, and so on, and to assess KPIs on equipment wear and rail/roadbed conditions.

"Commodity" is a bad word among technologists. It implies standardized, unchanging, noninnovative, boring, and cheap. Commodities are misunderstood. This Advisor seeks to dispel some of the myths around the commoditization of IT services (i.e., the cloud).

Our goal on projects as the project manager should be to remain as productive as possible and use resource time and effort as wisely as possible. That way we accomplish tasks, we get work done, we don't waste time, and we go easier on the project budget. One way to help ensure productivity and budget management is to make our project meetings as productive as possible.