As I read through Cutter Agile Practice Director Tom Grant’s recent article on Agile frameworks (see “Agile Frameworks: Does Anyone Know What a Framework Is?“), I kept thinking of one particular word: structure. People like frameworks because they provide a repeatable structure.

Agile frameworks are an attempt at defining a standard recipe that each team in an organization can follow. This recipe comes predefined with controls and deliverables and will help set a structure around Agile that other departments can understand. Moreover, a predefined recipe can be replicated across all the teams in the organization because they will all work the same way.

At least this is what some people hope.

What good is it to have a vision if you’re not trying to make it come true?

The secret: if you have a truly world-changing vision, you aren’t going to be able to make it happen alone. Like raising a child, achieving a vision requires a whole village.

Among a myriad of changes, we have seen obsolete technologies mercilessly replaced, witnessed a couple of global economic collapses, and several products and services that we could never have imagined before — like the Internet — have become part of our daily lives. Whenever I see new, life-changing technology, I can’t help thinking: how did we get here so fast? Naturally, countless factors come into play in answering such a question; this Executive Update discusses two of my favorites: applied foresight and transdisciplinary collaboration. 

The neuromorphic — or “brain” — chip is one of a number of avenues of development being pursued to extend the processing power of computers beyond Moore’s Law and to initiate the changes required for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. 

As we describe in this Executive Update, vision is the overarching driving goal for your organization’s future. It is not a measure of success or a target; it is not about increasing your profit margin. It is an important change that will shape your organization’s next five to 10 years.

This Update examines survey findings pertaining to the types of connected devices and IoT applications organizations believe hold the most promise.

Question leadership is a question-based management principle not a bumper sticker. Most brilliant, innovative leaders know that leading by asking questions is a more powerful leadership style than just having the “right” answers, and gets you not only better business and organizational outcomes, but also more widespread employee — and customer and stakeholder — commitment. Moreover, asking the “right” questions, in the right order, communicates the goals you want to achieve. 

Cutter Consortium conducted a survey asking organizations worldwide about their thoughts and plans for the Internet of Things (IoT). Parts I and II of this Executive Update series covered survey findings pertaining to how organizations view the IoT in terms of importance, the current and future status of corporate IoT budgets, whether survey respondents see the IoT living up to all its hype, and the main objectives and goals driving organizations to develop connected devices and applications.

We are rapidly moving to a world where individuals don’t switch off their technologies, and companies can’t switch off their technologies. Head-up displays, image recognition, wearable technologies, virtual reality, a revolution in manufacturing technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT), super-dense computer memory … the list goes on and on! But what does this mean for the future of enterprise architecture (EA) — as a discipline, as a process, and as it informs the nature of an enterprise? This is the theme for this Executive Update.

A psychological contract is a construct comprising an indi­vidual’s assumptions and beliefs about what each party to a contract must do and how they are to do it. All individuals in both parties have their own unique psychological versions of that contract, which makes managing expectations quite challenging. In this Update, we explore the topic of harnessing the value of the psychological contract.

In this Executive Update, we look at IaaS contracts and the contentious clauses you might expect to see from an IaaS vendor. We focus on a public (unrestricted) example of IaaS because a private one (restricted to your organization) is nearly identical to a typical outsourcing agreement in which you have physical servers hosted at a vendor’s site.

With more and more companies embarking on digital transformation efforts of one kind or another, Conway’s law applies simultaneously to three levels of disruption, as identified by Geoffrey Moore: the traditional R&D and IT level, the operating model, and the overall business design. This Executive Update provides guidance on how to apply Conway’s law meaningfully within and across these three disruption levels.

“In-silo” transformations of specific portfolios pose considerable challenges. This Executive Update offers some key considerations for the planning phase of such transformations and highlights a few challenges and possible solutions for the design and implementation of an in-silo operating model. [Not a Cutter Member? Download your complimentary copy here.]

Today’s software systems are moving toward API access in what has come to be called the API economy. Analytics providers are now beginning to offer analytics APIs for use by organizational software departments, developers, and individuals.

In this Executive Update, we investigate the dynamics of digital payment platforms in the Danish market. Although our focus is on Denmark, the strategies we discuss likely generalize to a large extent to the entry and expansion strategies of digital payment solutions in other markets.

This Update examines survey findings pertaining to benefits and trends driving organizations to develop IoT-connected products, applications, and services; how organizations use or plan to use IoT applications, devices, and data; primary issues viewed as impeding corporate IoT initiatives.

This Executive Update digs into the working rhythm of an instituted business architecture function. It utilizes PEST (political, economic, social, and technological) analysis and introduces a “5E methodology” to formulate, qualify, and deliver sustainable solutions for change.

As I explain in this Executive Update, service leadership is about doing the right thing for the right reasons and making principled, fact-based decisions.

As we move into the next era of computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) is likely to continue to develop as a serious security challenge. The IoT has been characterized as simply the attachment of diverse devices to the Internet, but it is also the entry point for a much more complex and nuanced issue, as we discuss in this Executive Update.

Central to psychological contracts is the inherently perceptual nature of contracts and the need to manage relationships, not just compliance with the written contract. In this Update we’ll be exploring the legal aspects of these contracts. When individuals begin to act as collectives (or clans, as they are known) with shared values and behaviors, patterns of behavior can override what the written document might say — not just in practice, but legally as well.

What is the status of IoT efforts within organizations? In addition, how do companies view the IoT, and connected products in general, in terms of importance? Moreover, what are the main factors influencing organizations to develop connected products and services, and what are their plans for developing such applications in the near future? Just as important, what are the issues and roadblocks organizations perceive as standing in their way?

As we explore in this Executive Update, the most important contract isn’t the written one. Another contract — a more crucial one — comes into play. This is the psychological contract — the deal that you perceive has been agreed to or, if you will, the “spirit of the agreement” in your eyes.

This Update is for people who want to know how, and if, wearables will affect the broad range of businesses not directly in the wearable business. If you have a wearable product in the marketplace or close to it, that’s great. But if you don’t (and perhaps even think that you don’t need to think about wearables at all), keep reading.

In this Executive Update, we focus on why SOA is better suited to tackle digital disruption and examine the three major value dials of the SOA paradigm. We explore what constitutes a pragmatic SOA foundation and break down a framework and sample scenario on how to exploit this foundation in the digital economy. This Update also includes relevant insights based on our experiences working with global clients, including lessons learned and best practices while building an SOA foundation.