Tackling the Risk Management Essentials
Noah Barsky
Proactive business risk management, distinct from the immediacy of finite crisis management, holds the potential for the most substantive and lasting changes to future company operations. Before COVID-19, when asked about top risks, executives would most often respond reflexively about regulatory oversight and economic conditions. If pressed further, many leaders quietly acknowledged concerns about the readiness of enterprise-wide risk programs to credibly identify, assess, and manage risk, particularly strategic risk.
Improve Software Systems Designs by Applying Residuality Theory
Barry M. O'Reilly
In this on demand webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Barry M. O’Reilly introduces a new way to model systems in complex environments — residuality theory. You'll explore how residue can be used as an alternative building block when producing systems, enabling designers to consider complex interdependencies without slowing down the design process.
How Is the Pandemic Impacting Enterprise Automation Efforts?
Curt Hall
Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, automation was deemed an important element of business survival and digital transformation strategies. Now we are constantly informed by vendors, the media, and IT advisory firms that business process automation is more necessary today than ever.
Value Stream Mapping as a Teaming Exercise
Catherine Louis, Karen Smiley
After doing some mini design thinking interviews at all levels of an organization to uncover hidden issues, the authors propose an 8-step value stream mapping exercise to help team members all get on the same page.
Bouncing Back from COVID-19, Part I: Consumer Electronics and Media
Karim Taga, Rohit Sethi, Gregory Pankert
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to sizable disruptions in international economic activity, impacting all industries, although at different magnitudes. It is now time for decision makers to expand their focus beyond immediate crisis management to actions that will strengthen their competitive play in the medium and long term. In this Advisor series, we take a look at the telecom, media, and technology sectors, in particular, which show relatively strong resilience to the adverse impact of COVID-19. Here in Part I, we begin with the COVID-19 impact to the consumer electronics and media world.
The Real Negotiation: Getting Over Your Collywobbles
Moshe Cohen
As IS executives, you negotiate constantly — whether it be externally with vendors, contractors, or other partners, or internally with different managers, departments, your project teams, or your direct reports. Some of these negotiations are formal, but most are informal, involving day-to-day interactions at work. These negotiations are consequential, determining your budgets, deliverables, schedules, availability of equipment or services, and other factors that influence your success. Unfortunately, many IS professionals never get exposed to negotiation skills and strategies as part of their education and training.
The Heart of Architecture
Balaji Prasad
An architecture is designed collaboratively. Architects are also, sometimes, part of the collaborative process. Yes, “also, sometimes, part of.” The collaborative nature of architecture in enterprises is what makes it so challenging, intriguing, and even vexing to those who are entangled in what is a very multidimensional process.
Q&A: What's Up and Coming with Blockchain?
Karolina Marzantowicz
Advances in blockchain technology have been unwavering. Thanks to a slew of current and emerging trends, blockchain is now viewed as a mature and accessible technology and business solution for those seeking to make transactions with greater security, transparency, speed, efficiency, and cost savings. In a Cutter Consortium webinar earlier this year, Karolina Marzantowicz revealed some new blockchain-based innovations — such as the growth of global blockchain consortiums, stablecoins, digital currencies, new service offerings from big tech giants, and decentralized finance platforms — that are revolutionizing the banking and finance industry by transforming both the business and consumer experience in positive ways. In this Advisor, we share six questions asked at the end of the webinar that may help you in your blockchain journey.
Reskilling and Retraining During and After COVID-19
Cui Zou, Wangchuchu Zhao, Keng Siau
While the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the economy and work routines, it also provides opportunities for organizations to implement continuous learning and make progress toward upskilling and reskilling employees. We recommend managers and companies consider the four types of learning technology for workforce training, professional development, and onboarding described in this Advisor.
Fast Feedback Processes, Measurable Outcomes, and Empowerment: Lessons from COVID-19
Borys Stokalski
In Poland, the lockdown started at the beginning of March 2020. Instantly, the business, education, healthcare as well as social and cultural life switched to a new “modus operandi,” based on online relationships, sharing of digital assets, and digitally enabled processes. Digital habits, which used to be an optional way of handling daily routine tasks, have suddenly become the only possible way of achieving personal, professional, or political goals.
Operational Planning & Risk Mitigation: Managing Risk with AI & ML
Tom Teixeira, Carl Bate, Craig Wylie
In the third installment of their webinar series, “Using AI/Machine Learning to Manage Risk,” Cutter Senior Consultants Carl Bate, Craig Wylie, and Tom Teixeira answered some questions about new risk models that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to understand and respond to the changing business landscape.
Innovex: Global Innovation Excellence Benchmarking
When you’ve benchmarked your ability to innovate with Innovex, you’ll be not only be able to identify areas for improvements, but you’ll also be positioned to develop better ecosystem capabilities, stronger core innovation processes, and develop breakthrough approaches.
Breaking Down Business Architecture: 5 Things to Know
Whynde Kuehn
As business architecture gains more and more attention and adoption worldwide, every once in a while it can be useful to lift up, step back, and refresh on a few key concepts. If you’re new to the discipline, these will help you to accelerate your understanding and navigate the wealth of information available. If you’re experienced with the discipline, these will help you to ensure alignment with the latest and greatest evolution. This Advisor lays out the top five foundational things you need to know about business architecture.
Dissecting the Aches and Pains of Implementing Business Agility
Borys Stokalski, Aleksander Solecki
This on-demand webinar looks at the processes and practices that support business agility from the perspectives of value innovation and product portfolio management. You’ll discover why “crossing of the Rubicon” is a useful metaphor to describe the challenge of rolling out an innovation that fundamentally changes the way an organization works, and why to achieve truly transformative changes, you’ll need to reevaluate skills, priorities, resources, and power.
Can IPA Facilitate AI Adoption in the Enterprise?
Curt Hall
The RPA vendors have taken considerable interest in IPA. Over the past year, many have been adding (to varying degrees) AI technologies — particularly ML, NLP, smartbots, and advanced imaging — to their platforms to provide intelligent capabilities necessary to automate more complex processes and tasks that are beyond the scope of what is possible using only conventional RPA tools. This, in effect, has allowed the RPA providers to try and position their products as a familiar platform for organizations to segue AI into their operations.
Scaling Agile Right in Large Companies, Part II
Volker Pfirsching, Marc Droste, Michael Opitz
Being capable to react to change with agility is a key requirement for all companies onboarding digital business models or digital products and processes. And when it comes to competing and staying relevant, agility is becoming a necessity. Large companies, however, appear to face a plethora of challenges with balancing agility and stability. Here in Part II of this two-part Advisor, we answer the question of how to learn and adapt after the pilot launch of an end-to-end Agile process and provide concrete examples of how large corporations have overcome imminent obstacles.
Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Closing the Gaps to Success
Guljeet Nagpaul
Even as digital tools recast the entire healthcare industry model, old problems remain, especially in the centralized and technologically inefficient modes of data management. That’s where good data software testing and quality assurance come into play in the form of test automation. As automation becomes the software development standard for revenue-minded companies, regular testing is required to make sure productivity and security activities are above board.
Using EA to Confront Digital Disruption: A Q&A with Roger Evernden
Roger Evernden
In his on-demand webinar, “EA in the Face of Digital Disruption,” Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Roger Evernden explored some of the issues enterprise architects are facing with digital disruption. He tackled how organizations and entire industries must rethink value — creating and capturing it — to meet the challenges that digital brings to our lives. In this Advisor, we share some of the questions addressed in the Q&A portion of the webinar.
Life and Death in a Time of Pandemic, Part I
Barry Devlin
Applying a simplistic algorithm to inadequate data fails to deliver expected exam grades as the pandemic exposes flawed thinking and underlying bias in the education system.
Weathering the COVID-19 Storm: An O&G Q&A
Rodolfo Guzman, Daniel Monzon
In a recent webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Rodolfo Guzmán and Daniel Monzón offered insight into what O&G companies need to focus on for the best chance to weather the COVID-19 storm. They also answered questions from participants about digital strategies and technologies that will support such transformations in their organizations.
Scaling Agile Right in Large Companies, Part I
Volker Pfirsching, Marc Droste, Michael Opitz
A big cause of failure for large organizations is the attempt to apply one of the many off-the-shelf Agile models. These typically work well for small companies, but not so much in large corporate settings. In Part I of this two-part Advisor, we explore the first half of a four-part framework to scale and customize a tailored Agile approach that caters to an organization’s specific requirements, beginning with assessing your needs in the understand phase. We then describe how picking building blocks from the many Agile concepts available will shape a working model according to the needs of your enterprise.
Proactive Testing Moves Proactive Risk Analysis to Action
Robin Goldsmith
Robin F. Goldsmith discusses the application of proactive risk management techniques in software testing and development. He observes that many of the risks encountered in software are largely predictable and explores why businesses still manage to fall foul of them and how the real processes employed in our organizations can differ starkly from how we presume them to be. Goldsmith goes on to discuss how a more proactive approach to risk identification at the early stages of a project often saves time and money later.
Proactive Testing Moves Proactive Risk Analysis to Action
Robin Goldsmith
Robin F. Goldsmith discusses the application of proactive risk management techniques in software testing and development. He observes that many of the risks encountered in software are largely predictable and explores why businesses still manage to fall foul of them and how the real processes employed in our organizations can differ starkly from how we presume them to be. Goldsmith goes on to discuss how a more proactive approach to risk identification at the early stages of a project often saves time and money later.
Cloud Data Warehouses: A Paradigm Shift in Data Platforms
Sagar Gole, Kamal Gupta, Vidyasagar Uddagiri
Enterprises need access to data-driven insights faster than ever before. Analytics use cases have evolved from traditional, precanned reports to self-service and guided analytics. Enterprises exploring solutions to these challenges are steadily embracing the cloud data warehouse. These platforms provide agility, scalability, and simplicity that enable the enterprise to focus on data solutions rather than spending valuable effort on peripheral overheads.
The Essentials of Great Innovation Teams, Part I: The Invisible Talent Gap
Robert Ogilvie, Jeffrey McNally
The team is the fundamental unit of organizational work, not the individual. But the ways we manage our teams — and thus our talent — often set us up for systemic gaps and increasing challenges (versus continuous improvement) over time. Today’s executives face two ongoing complex problems: business strategy and people leadership. The invisible nature of these talent issues makes solving them a strategic need through HR capacity building over time.
