These are tough times. Organizations have to do more with less. Managers have to stop being afraid of their staff and they need to get more done with less. This doesn’t mean that they should ignore new technologies. Indeed, there are some technologies out there that are mature and would improve productivity by orders of magnitude if used correctly, but they require discipline, and discipline requires management and commitment.

In this webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Masa Maeda will give you the foundation to understand what Kanban is about and why it is such an amazing productivity booster. Masa will describe the what, why, and hows of Kanban, and then open the session up to your questions. Don't miss this opportunity to see if Kanban is a tool that will support your agile methodology adoption.

The idea of managing demand has gained much traction in recent years -- especially with demand for resources outstripping the budgets for those resources. It is an idea that increasingly has become part and parcel of our everyday lives. We are urged to control our energy consumption to better match generation capacity and efficiency.

Security and data privacy/regulatory considerations are two of the biggest bottlenecks standing in the way of more organizations adopting cloud computing.

The Japanese government considers some practitioners so skilled and talented that they are subsidized and honored as "living national treasures." The US government and its Department of Defense consider the current domestic science and technical human capital pipeline a national security issue. Ensuring that critical skills endure has leaped onto the agenda of national policy makers and senior business decision makers.

The risk environment continues to grow in complexity as ever-increasing amounts of information become available to a growing array of processing and storage facilities on a rapidly diversifying range of devices. Complexity is fostered by the following:

The growth of silos of protection, where areas of infrastructure or processes have evolved their own security and risk management processes

The risk environment continues to grow in complexity as ever-increasing amounts of information become available to a growing array of processing and storage facilities on a rapidly diversifying range of devices. Complexity is fostered by the following:

The growth of silos of protection, where areas of infrastructure or processes have evolved their own security and risk management processes

The term "big data" gets thrown around a lot these days. The vendors are all talking about the need for organizations to meet their "big data" requirements. The same is true for the data warehousing and BI gurus. But just what actually constitutes big data depends a lot on whom you're speaking to.

There are ways to make decisions and ways to avoid them. We tend to avoid decisions that make people unhappy or -- worse -- really angry. We do this for obvious reasons: careers can be shortened if we step on the wrong political mines.

There are ways to make decisions and ways to avoid them. We tend to avoid decisions that make people unhappy or -- worse -- really angry. We do this for obvious reasons: careers can be shortened if we step on the wrong political mines.

Surveys of CEO strategic priorities consistently place innovation near the top.1 However, innovation is synonymous with change, and lower levels of management, especially seasoned managers, know that change can be expensive and disruptive. In product development, changes late in a project usually mean serious schedule and budget overruns.

Surveys of CEO strategic priorities consistently place innovation near the top.1 However, innovation is synonymous with change, and lower levels of management, especially seasoned managers, know that change can be expensive and disruptive. In product development, changes late in a project usually mean serious schedule and budget overruns.

This Executive Update focuses on a specific vision of IT: right-time and right-scale delivery of right IT services to the right person at the right place. This view appears to be on solid ground today and is moving toward dramatic increases of acceptance. Consequently, two revolutionary trends are coming to the forefront as this vision takes hold of the people in command: enterprise IT and personal IT.

This Executive Update focuses on a specific vision of IT: right-time and right-scale delivery of right IT services to the right person at the right place. This view appears to be on solid ground today and is moving toward dramatic increases of acceptance. Consequently, two revolutionary trends are coming to the forefront as this vision takes hold of the people in command: enterprise IT and personal IT.

Requirements define things that a product or service are supposed to do to satisfy the needs of the client. A more formal definition is given by the International Institute of Business Analysis in "A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge" (PDF):

The worst mistake is not telling the boss.

Or so said an article a few years ago in the Washington Post about the importance of immediately disclosing problems or mistakes to your boss.1

It has been just over 50 years since preeminent IBM computer scientist Hans Peter Luhn coined the term "business intelligence." And ever since then, BI has been viewed as getting information to the people who need it in a timely fashion and in a form that is easily consumed and acted on (the right data to the right people at the right time).

It has been just over 50 years since preeminent IBM computer scientist Hans Peter Luhn coined the term "business intelligence." And ever since then, BI has been viewed as getting information to the people who need it in a timely fashion and in a form that is easily consumed and acted on (the right data to the right people at the right time).

Server virtualization has made considerable headway in the enterprise. But the use of virtualization for desktop (client) computing has been rather limited. This has been primarily attributed to technical issues that have made for a poor end-user experience and difficulties in managing and scaling virtual desktop infrastructure environments.

Agile software development -- developing an application in small increments, where stakeholders can review the results and reevaluate goals after each time-boxed iteration -- is simple and powerful. However, implementing the practices that enable agile software development can be difficult because adopting an agile approach requires change across the organization. This three-part Executive Update series will discuss how best to start the agile adoption process.

David Van De Voort, a partner in human capital consulting services at Mercer, recently authored a report in Workforce Solutions Review summarizing a study of 193,283 employees representing 1,033 organizations ("

Sometimes I wonder if, as an industry, we ever learn. Two recent projects that I've worked on got me thinking about this. In both cases, the companies are replacing existing custom-built applications with new commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications.

Sometimes I wonder if, as an industry, we ever learn. Two recent projects that I've worked on got me thinking about this. In both cases, the companies are replacing existing custom-built applications with new commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications.

Budgets are plans for spending money.

Budgets are plans for spending money.