We usually think of leaders in large terms: Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and so on. However, small acts of leadership happen every day, forming the glue that holds civil society together. These include helping a shorter person put a bag in the overhead compartment, organizing neighborhood cleanups, or starting petitions to change government. These are moments of “guest leadership.”

We spoke with several technology leaders of large, established enterprises who are successfully tackling the myriad challenges of digitization: transforming their operating model and technical architectures, streamlining core processes, simplifying legacy systems, improving data quality, and unwinding excessive governance and control mechanisms. They are navigating the balance of technical and social considerations and creating a culture of continuous collaboration, problem solving, experimentation, and learning, which collectively creates enterprise-wide agility. These are very big enterprises that are learning to operate like small, agile startups. 

The values contained in the House of Lean for the 21st Century give us guidance as to the mindset required to succeed, but it takes concrete practices to bring these values to life. Given that leadership is the foundation of Lean, the effective Lean leader needs to form habits that align to the pillars that support the goal. 

Apart from consumer adoption of digital technologies, startups are also disrupting the status quo of traditional organizations. To address the threats and capitalize on the opportunities, organizations are transforming themselves to enable digital capabilities to improve customer experience and offer analytics-driven personalized products, services, and collaborative innovations, leading to increased top lines and margins. 

Apart from consumer adoption of digital technologies, startups are also disrupting the status quo of traditional organizations. To address the threats and capitalize on the opportunities, organizations are transforming themselves to enable digital capabilities to improve customer experience and offer analytics-driven personalized products, services, and collaborative innovations, leading to increased top lines and margins. 

Our research and consulting reveal that CEOs and their CxO colleagues play a pivotal role in determining whether or not their organizations exploit the innovative opportunities provided by digital technologies. Creating and sustaining value from digital investments requires the CEO’s focused attention and oversight. CEOs set the tone, and their active participation determines whether their organizations optimize a return from any spending on IT. Most CEOs don’t seem to understand this or quite know what they should do. 

Our research and consulting reveal that CEOs and their CxO colleagues play a pivotal role in determining whether or not their organizations exploit the innovative opportunities provided by digital technologies. Creating and sustaining value from digital investments requires the CEO’s focused attention and oversight. CEOs set the tone, and their active participation determines whether their organizations optimize a return from any spending on IT. Most CEOs don’t seem to understand this or quite know what they should do. 

Today, when everybody wants to disrupt their own or somebody else’s business, and new technologies that let them do it seem to appear almost daily, people with the “capacity to lead” are critical, and nowhere more than in the exploitation of IT. Obvious though this is, recognizing, empowering, and sustaining good IT leaders has been a challenge. People who can think strategically about what, why, and how to deploy technology but have trouble delivering it — and the reverse — fall short as IT leaders. Both skills are needed, and this edition of Cutter Business Technology Journal covers them in great depth.

Today, when everybody wants to disrupt their own or somebody else’s business, and new technologies that let them do it seem to appear almost daily, people with the “capacity to lead” are critical, and nowhere more than in the exploitation of IT. Obvious though this is, recognizing, empowering, and sustaining good IT leaders has been a challenge. People who can think strategically about what, why, and how to deploy technology but have trouble delivering it — and the reverse — fall short as IT leaders. Both skills are needed, and this edition of Cutter Business Technology Journal covers them in great depth.

As the amount of data generated by personal devices increases, supported by the trend of making these devices more personal (i.e., wearable, sewable), so too will the risks of personal privacy violation rise. From the technological perspective, it is important to follow privacy-by-design approaches, incorporating both data encryption and data anonymization techniques. From the perspective of enterprises and users, understanding that “wearing means sharing” is a valuable first step.

There is a common set of questions burning in peoples’ minds when they think about the business architect role, whether they are new to the discipline or experienced but seeking to compare approaches. In this Advisor, we address these important questions based on practical experience and best practices employed by a wide range of industries, organizations, and geographies.

In this all-new webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Alexandre Rodrigues will discuss how a shift in perspective and reassertion of some key principles of project management can make EVM a successful tool for managing performance on Agile projects.

Regulatory authorities are becoming increasingly focused on monitoring outsourcing arrangements in the financial services industry.

Social collaboration is not about technology. It’s about connecting people, and it’s changing the way business is being conducted. Similarly, gamification is not about games. It’s about motivating the per­sonal and professional behaviors that drive business value. Together, social collaboration and gamifi­cation help companies reap great benefits — among them, the ability to deepen customer relationships, drive operational efficiencies, and optimize their workforce. 

If you are spending US $50,000+ per month on public cloud, you have likely reached the penultimate rung of cloud torment — a journey from the Plains of Forecasting to the Gates of Commitment — and certainly you want to pass through the Undercroft of Budgetary Responsibility as unscathed as possible. Even those organizations that have been in and around the cloud for some time will need to go deeper to understand how to address challenges to their cloud buyer strategy. What’s around the corner for some CIOs is already a reality for those organizations in the throes of digital revitalization.

The new generation is looking for life-work balance as well as inspiring leaders who will fire them up and motivate them. In the new workplace, company values actually need to mean something. People need to see their leaders living and breathing these values every day.

Roadmaps have two key functions in strategy planning. The first is to outline planned architectural changes that will deliver the required strategies; the second is to outline alternative ways to achieve the same results.

As companies strive to be more nimble and agile across their value chains, they are rapidly evolving their information management and analytics capabilities. Business intelligence and data warehouse (BI/DW) competency centers need to transform themselves to stay relevant and help their companies build a competitive advantage. This Executive Update provides a description of some key changes you can make to start transforming your BI/DW competency center in a cost-effective manner. Some of these changes include enabling advanced analytics, accelerating speed to market with Agile and DevOps, and empowering citizen developers and data scientists.

Our analysis in this Executive Update builds upon the challenges and risks we outlined in a previous Update, which showed how managers in regulated firms face a quandary: whether to play it safe and lock out cloud-based innovations and correspondingly lock themselves out of related innovations or to negotiate a rocky course, balancing the risks associated with these technologies and regulatory expectations. This Update provides a detailed assessment to help management understand when to strategically engage with cloud technologies and when to avoid them, thereby helping executives balance the need to innovate with the need to manage compliance risk. Our assessment, based on research and data collection conducted from 2014-2016, allows managers to evaluate the criticality of impacted services to maintaining compliance along with managers’ ability to understand and control transparency and supervision over cloud arrangements.

Thinking in terms of digital business capabilities helps focus on things that need to be done to achieve expected business results.

I have been a member of the “gig” economy for the last 20 years — I just didn’t know it.

In this on-demand webinar, you’ll discover how, regardless of the size of your company, you can take advantage of thinking about the future and act on transdisciplinary insights.

In this webinar, you'll discover the strategic and tactical opportunities made possible by Digital Data Streams and the opportunities for improved customer experience made possible by DDS.

In this webinar, you'll discover the strategic and tactical opportunities made possible by Digital Data Streams and the opportunities for improved customer experience made possible by DDS.

In this hour-long recorded webinar, you'll learn about the strategy execution life cycle and the critical role business architecture plays in it.