Advisors provide a continuous flow of information on the topics covered by each practice, including consultant insights and reports from the front lines, analyses of trends, and breaking new ideas. Advisors are delivered directly to your email inbox, and are also available in the resource library.
Where Organizations Are Focusing Sustainability Efforts
Curt Hall
Governments and industries worldwide are accelerating their efforts to reduce the carbon footprint associated with their operations, supply chains, products, and services — and technology is playing a key role in these efforts. In this Advisor, we look at some of the key areas and projects where organizations are focusing their carbon reduction and other environmental sustainability initiatives.
Flexibility Can Help Tech Close the DEI Gap
Benjamin Duke
A societal attitude that home and childcare duties should be carried out by women is widespread in many countries. During the COVID-19 global pandemic, more women than men lost their jobs or felt they had to stop work. But the IT sector initiated, and needs to continue with, COVID-19-induced societal transformation toward remote work.
What Does “DEI” Really Mean?
Samin Saadat
The term “DEI” (diversity, equity, inclusion) is currently trending across the business world but is frequently and increasingly misused. In this Advisor, we break down each concept into simple language that can help your company "walk the talk" when it comes to organizational transformation.
Advancing DEI with Evolving Attitudes and Inclusive Language
Benjamin Duke
DEI problems are created by offensive and archaic attitudes that persist in the workplace. As explored in this Advisor, organizations can advance DEI by removing their institutional structural barriers and by using inclusive language to help create an equitable workplace.
Aligning Decentralized and Hybrid R&D Activity: A CTO's Challenge
Ben Thuriaux, Enguerran Ripert, Nicholas Johnson
Increasingly, organizations are adopting a decentralized approach to R&D, carrying out a significant amount of activity within the business units. This Advisor explores the challenge of gaining R&D insight, from project management systems that don't fit the bill, to the need for better system configuration.
When Good Data Goes Bad, Part VI
Barry Devlin
Good data is honestly and ethically sourced, fully contextualized, reliable, resilient, widely available, and well-understood. How can this be achieved? Contemplating these characteristics, we are led directly to principles and programs for data/information governance, ethics, and the organizational structures needed to support and drive their success. This Advisor explores the path forward to good data.
Technology Push Is Winning the Adoption Race
Steve Andriole
How are today's organizations adopting and deploying emerging technologies? Research suggests that companies have abandoned their obsession with “requirements” and — however quietly — appear to instead endorse a “technology-first/requirements-second” approach to technology adoption.
Diverse Values and Perspectives Lead to Quality Team Work
Robert Ogilvie, Jeffrey McNally
As work and teams strive to be more agile, team diversity boosts resilience by allowing the team to adapt to new missions and changing situations more easily.
The Root Cause of Ineffective Software Design
William Ulrich
Organizations can utilize business architecture to inform and shape software designs to achieve more stable, maintainable, and scalable software systems. This Advisor examines the root cause of ineffective software design, specifically, the lack of consistency and clarity of the business perspectives being used as input to software design efforts.
Growing More with Less: Drones in Precision Agriculture
Helen Pukszta
Precision agriculture is a set of farming management practices that produces higher yields through more efficient use of critical resources such as land and water, as well as lowered consumption of fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides. This Advisor explores how drone technology enables these practices.
Alleviating Algorithmic Bias in AI-Powered HR & Workforce Management Systems
Curt Hall
Neural networks and other ML model development typically use large amounts of data for training and testing purposes. Because much of this data is historical, there is the risk that the AI models could learn existing prejudices pertaining to gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and other biases. This Advisor explores how the Data & Trust Alliance consortium created an initiative to help end-user organizations evaluate vendors offering AI-based solutions according to their ability to detect, mitigate, and monitor algorithmic bias over the lifecycle of their products.
How to Define, Assess and Plan Successful Technology Projects
Sridhar Deenadayalan
Project success is evaluated by the degree to which an end goal is achieved. Having a vivid understanding of the result, its impact, and the potential impediments to success can help improve a project. This Advisor explores the three beginning stages of a technology project and their keys to success: define, assess, and plan. Each stage has its own characteristics that need examination.
Transform Project Thinking with a Logistical Mindset
Robert Charette
Learn how a logistical mindset transforms project thinking from focusing on avoiding failure to concentrating on achieving success.
Unlock Value and Create Competitive Advantage with Sustainability
Stefano Milanese, Martijn Eikelenboom, Carlo Stella, Stefano Decadri
As we explore in this Advisor, there are tangible benefits to basing corporate purpose on sustainability drivers, and sustainable business models are gaining pace. Therefore, businesses should rethink their role in the context in which they operate and adapt their strategy, organization, resources, processes, and culture accordingly.
Key CPaaS Use Cases
Christoph Uferer, Lars Riegel, Sean McDevitt, Arvind Rajeswaran
Communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) products offer quick and easy ways for businesses to build features that allow them to communicate with their customers safely and reliably. This Advisor explores key CPaaS use cases and identifies three desirable benefits of CPaaS.
A New Push for IoT in Healthcare
Ulrica Sehlstedt, Rebecka Axelsson Wadman, Sean McDevitt, Agron Lasku
As we explore in this Advisor, new Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for healthcare are smarter and, more importantly, tailored to the needs and requirements of healthcare organizations. With 5G being rolled out, now is the time for healthcare providers to set their IoT roadmaps.
Creating a Positive Environmental Impact with Mobile and Web Apps
Jacek Chmiel
An often-overlooked aspect in the global discussion about sustainability when it comes to information and communications technology is how software can be created and deployed to mitigate a company’s environmental footprint. This Advisor looks at Mobile and Web apps to see what we can do to create a more positive environmental impact.
AI's Potential for Social Good
Denis Dennehy
We encounter AI in our daily lives with services such as Netflix and Amazon using AI and predictive technology to analyze billions of records to suggest films, books, and other items we might like based on our previous reactions and choices and those of others like us. But the potential of AI goes far beyond entertainment and shopping services.
Driving Sustainability via Technology Strategies — An Introduction
Deishin Lee
The ability to monitor and authenticate is crucial for providing credibility to many sustainability efforts. The use of technology (e.g., blockchain, satellite imagery) to monitor and verify activities provides a method of ensuring accountability for actions, both good and bad. This issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal explores the ways technology can be used to monitor and improve the sustainability of a wide range of processes, industrial and otherwise.
How AI is Helping the Environment, Healthcare, and Other Recent Developments
Jayashree Arunkumar
How powerful are today’s artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, and which areas are showing the most promise? This Advisor explores how AI can help the environment through the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the enormous potential for AI in patient care, and provides additional examples of how AI is impacting everyday life.
Bolstering Sustainability Initiatives with Carbon Intelligence Platforms
Curt Hall
Cloud-based carbon intelligence platforms can help companies track, measure, and model their CO2 emissions — including providing the ability to integrate and analyze carbon emissions data acquired from across their supply chains — and chart the progress of their overall sustainability initiatives. This Advisor explores some of the new products on the market utilizing distributed ledger technologies to support carbon intelligence platforms.
Stop Talking Yourself Out of Agility with “Not Yet” Stories
Cheryl Crupi
Speed, productivity, quality, and engagement — the benefits of Agile — are vital to your business. Business leaders across industries strive to cultivate these essential qualities on a day-to-day basis. The sheer volume of podcasts, books, seminars, and articles centering on these elements indicate an impressive collective interest in becoming Agile. However, many leaders are slow to start the Agile journey — at least right now.
Consider AI's Unintended Consequences
Paul Clermont
Explore the unintended consequences, such as erosion of human skills and the scope expansion that takes us from reconnecting with old friends online to channels that broadcast un-fact-checked news, that AI can bring. In this Advisor, Paul Clermont offers no-nonsense advice for dealing with these issues.
Using KRIs for Effective Risk Management
Hannah Marsden, Kerri McGowan, Clive Adams
For a KRI framework to be successful, it is vital that KRIs are well selected so they can support the business and its objectives within the risk appetite. This Advisor explores some of the means by which KRIs can be established.
Best Practices for Socializing Business Architecture
Whynde Kuehn
There is no better way to socialize and gain traction with business architecture than to deliver results using it. This Advisor explores best practices, tips, and hacks for establishing and socializing business architecture, ensuring it is appreciated and embedded within the fabric of the organization.