I have recently seen the SAFe framework criticized by the Scrum founder as well as the Kanban founder (see "unSAFEe at Any Speed" and "Kanban -- The Anti-SAFe for Almost a Decade Already"). Method wars are not new, however, and could go on forever. In the face of these discussions, it is important to remember the real intent behind Agile methods.

Information technology and systems underpin the operations and existence of all organizations today, with very few exceptions.

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.

A couple of years back, I was in a very large requirements meeting for a big project. The subject was the design of something relatively technical, and the young outside consultant running the meeting was trying to get a consensus from the group so she asked for a vote.

The latest industry development concerning the advancement of the IOT is the recent formation of the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) by AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM, and Intel. This not-for-profit group (with an open membership) is important for several reasons.

"I cannot tell you why it took years for a safety defect to be announced." So admitted new GM CEO Mary Barra this week in her testimony to the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, which is looking into why it has taken over a decade to recall GM automobiles that were sold with a now-acknowle

People seem to equate programming with coding, and that's a problem. Before you code, you should understand what you're doing. If you don't write down what you're doing, you don't know whether you understand it, and you probably don't if the first thing you write down is code.

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Cutter Fellow Robert N. Charette's introduction to the March 2014 issue of Cutter IT Journal, " Workforce 2020–2025: What Skills Are Needed to Survive and Thrive?" (Vol.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has developed in fits and starts since the 1970s, resulting in numerous advances, but often failing to achieve the levels of capability that had been imagined.

In the first sentence of his excellent 9 December 2013 blog post, Andrew McAfee points out the following: "Here's a simple rule for the second machine age we're in now: as the amount of data goes up,

In software and systems engineering, a use case is a list of steps, typically defining interactions between a role (known in Unified Modeling Language (UML) as an "actor") and a system, to achieve a goal. The actor can be a human or an external system.

Since its inception, enterprise architecture has suffered an evolution failure. Why "suffered"? Because EA has gradually become an area of exclusive IT competency.

Among the most intriguing books about leadership I've read in the last year was David Marquet's Turn the Ship Around, in which Marquet -- a submarine captain of the US Navy -- describes how he turned the frustrated crew o

"Connection, I just can't make no connection" -- (Connection, Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)

This is an interesting time in the evolution toward the Internet of Things (IoT). On the road toward well-integrated, well-protected, useful interconnected systems, four things need to happen: interest, technology enablers, security, and management skills.

Having watched technology trends for a very long time, I have noticed how time and again great ideas get watered down as they reach larger and larger audiences and are applied to bigger and bigger problems. In a way, this phenomenon resembles dropping a large rock in a lake.

I'm excited about the Internet of Things (IoT), and I expect it to create incredible opportunities for companies in almost every industry.

In negotiations, there is always a tension between trying to achieve the most effective outcomes for your side of the table and trying to build and maintain relationships with the other parties. The difficulty is greatest when both the outcome and the relationship matter a lot, and where any tradeoffs you make favoring one over the other come with benefits but also with substantial costs.

Although currently limited in its application, streaming analytics technology is going to experience a lot more use as the IoT begins to advance due to its ability to ingest and analyze very high volumes of continuously streaming data (both unstructured and semistructured) in real time. Basically, both of these characteristics are key for sensor data management systems.

In the early 1980s, Douglas Adams became famous for creating a future world that was both advanced and absurd in the Hitchh

Management reserve is a tool that project managers can use to protect the project schedule against unplanned changes that compromise the project completion date.

One of the hits that enterprise architecture has taken over the years is that while enterprise architecture studies produce interesting pictures, they often don't produce "actionable" information.

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Sue McKinney's introduction to the February 2014 issue of Cutter IT Journal, " Agile Architecture: Dodo Bird or Differentiator?" (Vol. 27, No. 2).

Lynn Winterboer answers questions on user stories, how regulatory requirements play out in Agile DW/BI, examples of good acceptance criteria, and the recommended sprint length for DW teams.

Keeping up with IT is a tough business. There is always something new, and the current Big Thing is liable to be the next Old Thing (Old Hat?) fast enough to make your head spin. Sometimes it feels like it is almost impossible to keep up.