Risk management is central to the concept of resilience, and the ability to manage risk has grown significantly through the increasing sophistication of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) systems.

On a national, regional, and local scale in the US, it's compelling to watch the reactions to the recent snow and ice storms that battered everyone from the Gulf to the Eastern Seaboard.

Practical, authentic Agile culture encompasses both the planned and the flexible, the technical and the social. Agile in practice is the balancing act between the yin and the yang of methods.

The recent data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus stores reveal some disturbing findings. Most troubling is that the malware involved was quite sophisticated, and was able to avoid detection by the retailers' security practices and anti-malware technology for some time.

The world around your company has changed. What does the Internet in general -- and the latest trends of cloud computing and Big Data in particular -- mean for knowledge about your customers? The core of these changes is the amount of connectivity we now have, as individuals and as a society.

In part I of this series of Advisors, I discussed the "Internet of Things" (IoT) and its industry/business counterpart the "industrial Internet" (see "The Internet of Things: Lots of Data, Lots of Opportunities -- Part I").

In recent memory, two US national security breaches stand out: those of Robert Hanssen and Edward Snowden.

In the past months there has been a growing interest in blueprints and frameworks for "scaling Agile" -- be it Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), Less, or other approaches.

As our economies continue slowly to rebound, we found in our 2013 annual IT budget survey (see "IT Budgeting in 2013: Are We Finally Back on Track?") that companies are still implementing programs to cut IT costs.

The "Internet of Things" (IoT) is more than a buzzword.

Traditionally, risk management is advocated and assumed to be a self-evidently correct framework. It offers a planning method for individual risks yet ignores systemic, complex risk and uncertainty. Often, ways of managing risk are established based on compliance with process. The process itself and its application are not themselves questioned.

Even today with Agile software development, it's comfortable to think that prescriptive strategies such as managing changing requirements in the form of a product backlog, holding a daily meeting where everyone answers three questions, having a single requirements owner (and thereby one neck to wring), and other such ideas will get the job done. But we all know that some of these "rules" are meant to be broken.

In an ongoing effort to add some sizzle to the BPM steak, analysts and educators are finding descriptors to add to BPM. A couple of years ago, there was some buzz around intelligent business process management suites, or iBPMS.

DW/BI teams that embrace an Agile approach are finding they can meet the top-priority needs in short time frames and with higher quality than they could using a traditional waterfall approach to project management. However, like many disciplines in life, Agile concepts are relatively simple to explain yet often difficult to master. Why do DW/BI teams find Agile transformation difficult, and how can they overcome those difficulties? What cultural/organizational challenges must be overcome for a successful DW/BI Agile transformation? What is the "vision" of a successful Agile DW/BI team to which teams in transition can aspire?

Social media is touted increasingly as an important source for identifying key indicators pertaining to consumer sentiment, product/brand preferences, market volatility, buying habits, and other trends that organizations can apply in their efforts to understand and influence consumer purchasing, opinion, and other behaviors.

Cutter Fellow Ron Blitstein, Piet Ribbers, and I have just finished a new book, due out in April.

I often get questions from management and teams about how many ScrumMasters they will need as an organization, how many product owners are sufficient, how many QA professionals they need, and so on. I think the better question concerns the number of nondeveloper, value-providing friends an Agile team needs and then finding a continuum to answer the question at the enterprise level.

Google has recently launched a buying spree for robotics companies, gaining attention through acquisition of Boston Dynamics, a creator of sophisticated animal-like robots for the US Defense Department.

The US government has been working to provide greater transparency and availability for its immense collection of stored data, and this is important for analytics. Government data ranges from census information to scientific information and transaction details for government actions.

Over the past 20 years, the Internet has matured past its troubled adolescence and now swiftly seeps toward global saturation. It has quickly moved from a throw-it-on novelty to a now fully intertwined quilt woven into a large swath of human existence.

Tools and technologies are an essential part of any distributed Agile development. Companies invest thousands of dollars in procuring high-fidelity video conferencing equipment at their onshore locations. However, one thing they nearly always ignore is the integration capability with their offshore locations.

Two countries that come to mind when discussing offshore development are India and China. Although both countries have good infrastructure for software development, there are two technology aspects that need careful attention.

The Object Management Group (OMG) has published the initial version of its decision model and notation (DMN) specification.

Trust is the bandwidth of communication.

-- Karl-Erik Sveiby

Trust but verify.

-- Ronald Reagan