While theoretical discussions of decisions involving IT-related ethics are interesting, this past year highlighted the real effects of ignoring IT ethics in business decisions.

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. 

I have seen — and am sure that many of you have, as well — architecture cartoons, cost-benefit numbers, and trade-off-matrices that look pretty but lack the integrity that we need from these artifacts. This is not to say that these representations do not hold potential. They do, if we are able to tease out the signal from the noise, and if we are able to bring out the nuances related to where on the fact-to-fiction spectrum a particular data point lies.

Emerging technologies continue to challenge IT as the pace of innovation and introduction of disruptive new platforms continues to accelerate. We are on the verge of huge changes across every area of technology and society. Dominant themes include mobility, interconnection, agility, and global participation. The technologies that support these trends involve Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), mobility, modularization, Internet connectivity, and the digitization of everything.

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we've compiled the most intriguing articles published by the Agile Product Management & Software Engineering Excellence practice this year for today's Advisor. How did we come up with this list? We chose the articles that garnered the most feedback from Cutter Members and clients and those that created controversy among Cutter Senior Consultants and Fellows.

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we've compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Business Technology & Digital Transformation Strategies practice this year for today's Advisor. How did we come up with this list? We chose the articles that garnered the most feedback from Cutter Members and clients and those that created controversy among Cutter Senior Consultants and Fellows.

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we've compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Business & Enterprise Architecture practice for today's Advisor. How did we come up with this list? We chose the articles that garnered the most feedback from Cutter Members. Your questions and comments not only make it possible to create lists like this, they help focus Cutter's Senior Consultants' research on the areas that are most important to organizations like yours. So please keep your feedback coming.

As has been our tradition for the last several years, we've compiled the five most intriguing articles published by the Data Analytics & Digital Technologies practice this year for today's Advisor. How did we come up with this list? We chose the articles that garnered the most feedback from Cutter Members and clients and those that created controversy among Cutter Senior Consultants and Fellows.

In this series of Advisors, we share a conversation among Cutter colleagues of the Agile Product Management & Software Engineering Excellence practice. In this installment, Practice Director Tom Grant shares his thoughts on Agile frameworks.

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.

Jelly molds come in all shapes and sizes. You can get ones in the shape of a rabbit, pig, cat, or butterfly, and dinosaurs are really popular. In addition to animal shapes, there are airplanes, castles, or a traditional pudding shaped–mold. But the key thing about jelly molds is that every time we pour jelly into the mold, it will produce the same shape. And that is true of architectural jelly molds as well; they force outputs into a specific shape or pattern. If we look at enterprise architecture today, there are a small number of jelly mold styles that get used over and over again.

Design thinking — a method for spurring creativity in innovation and problem-solving in business — has gained popularity among managers over the past few years. The method is inspired by the way in which professional designers work and can be applied by professionals with backgrounds other than design. The idea is that the traditional, highly analytical ways of thinking in business are not very effective for coming up with new and original approaches to tackle specific problems, or to renew a company's strategy, processes, or products. Instead, we can learn much from the way designers think. So what happens when design thinking meets business? What are the key mechanisms — or activity and thinking patterns — that the method seeks to promote in the teams practicing it? And how can a company implementing design thinking enable its teams to execute the design thinking process successfully?

In this report, the author first briefly clarifies what she means by design thinking. This is to avoid confusion that otherwise may arise from the different meanings associated with the term. Subsequently, she provides a short introduction to the method itself, and then introduces two cases and their design thinking practice. Next, she presents a framework of findings and explain the different concepts of the framework and their interconnections through examples from the cases. To extend this, she provides some additional thoughts on the presented findings before finally wrapping it all up in an alternative visualization of some of the key learnings from this report.

Last week, IBM launched the Watson Internet of Things (IoT) business unit. The goal: apply the natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and other advanced analytic techniques of its Watson cognitive computing platform to capitalize on helping clients develop IoT applications tailored to specific industries and applications. The initial focus will be on automotive, electronics, healthcare, insurance, and industrial manufacturing.

In this webinar, recorded April 6, 2016, Roger Evernden teaches you what is required of architecture professionals in managing architectural evolution. Will the field naturally emerge, or will it require the intervention of architects?

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. 

Join Sheila Cox as she leads you through the tricky human factors that could spell success (or failure) for your organization's digital transformation. 

Enterprises in every domain are undergoing digital transformation. New age digital companies are overturning the existing business models, and technology is fundamentally driving these changes. In this article, Manish Gupta explores how existing enterprises can transform and digitize their business, operations, and technology processes to compete better in the market, create new revenue opportunities, and better serve the customer.

In this article, the authors argue the past is a poor playbook for the future when it comes to delivering real business value from technology. Whilst successful exploitation of legacy technologies is critical, the best practices that the IT industry has promoted and applied for the last 20 years have little value in this endeavor. In a fundamentally changed world, technologists will need to embrace and adopt "next practices" if they are to be successful. Before moving on to this challenge, though, we first need to establish that the situation we face as technologists has indeed changed fundamentally.

CxOs believe technological advances are driving the shift in the competitive environment. But there are marked differences in how they're preparing to take on digital invaders and attackers from other industries. CxOs increasingly leverage new technologies to focus on customers as individuals. And they see a need to collaborate more, with more external parties, for innovation. Although many organizations acknowledge the need to get closer to the action, as the authors describe in this article, it's "torchbearers" who are exploring new opportunities in adjacent spaces. Torchbearers do not try to emulate everything a digital invader would do, but they do have a keener sense of how the competitive arena has shifted. Torchbearers are more likely to be looking forward and looking outward to entering new markets and embracing a more decentralized management style. Torchbearers are poised to strike back.

Digital customer engagement, for example, has blurred organizational boundaries, giving rise to practices such as open innovation, social question-and-answer sites, and crowdfunding. More recently, the influx of wearable technologies and smart devices has set in motion a migration of digital activities into the analog space. These devices bring new capabilities, some of which are incremental extensions of existing systems, others of which are radically and profoundly new.

Collaborating closely with the public employment service for the Flemish region in Belgium, VDAB, we created a digital strategy for VDAB using a novel method called Action Design Research. In this article, we present VDAB's approach to digital transformation, together with its digital strategy, the "boundary-breaking rules." Coining these rules was an important first step in VDAB's digital transformation, as they show the "boundary-breakingly" different ways in which VDAB will have to work.

Cutter Fellow Steve Andriole suggests five steps to successful corporate digital transformation. These have emerged from the DT efforts we've seen over the past few years and from the cumulative understanding of enterprise program management that has evolved over the past 50 years. Some of these steps are obvious, but some are not. Put another way, not every company can -- or should -- be digitally transformed. So before setting up an "Innovation Lab" or funding huge DT projects, do some homework.

A digital transformation isn't just launching a brand on social media, hosting an electronic storefront, or connecting the enterprise workforce. Nor is it activating big data or analytics to synthesize new differentiators. A digital transformation requires escape from the routine mindset of business strategy to discover adjacent opportunities and strategies that create an asymmetric competitive advantage (i.e., a powerful advantage that denies competitors the use of similar strategies and tactics).