Agile is never done. Without a conscious commitment to sustaining new ways of working, teams can fall back into old habits. Plus, staff turnover or growth brings in individuals who weren’t part of the original shared commitments. Naysayers find evidence that something’s not working — one more reason to subvert change.

Lean companies develop their capabilities and processes continuously as part of their culture. Continuous improvement allows them to align their activities flexibly, according to business strategy. Due to this holistic alignment, these companies achieve relatively high-performance levels compared to their competitors.

There are a multitude of innovative applications across industries where RPA solutions are improving the quality of repeated tasks and releasing resources. In this Advisor, I share a sampling of a few interesting case studies and examples of RPA in action.

Michael Gleeson discusses how public health agencies and emergency managers can leverage the digitization of contact tracing of airline passengers at risk from a biological outbreak. He outlines the increased risk of infection and spread, facilitated by the increased numbers of airline passengers globally. A global framework to prepare for and respond to a biological threat, natural or otherwise, spread via air travel, can be achieved through the digitization of contact tracing using a collaborative approach among the airline industry, public health agencies, and EM practitioners. Identifying and locat­ing at-risk passengers in a fast and efficient manner is paramount to limiting contagion spread.

Michael Gleeson discusses how public health agencies and emergency managers can leverage the digitization of contact tracing of airline passengers at risk from a biological outbreak. He outlines the increased risk of infection and spread, facilitated by the increased numbers of airline passengers globally. A global framework to prepare for and respond to a biological threat, natural or otherwise, spread via air travel, can be achieved through the digitization of contact tracing using a collaborative approach among the airline industry, public health agencies, and EM practitioners. Identifying and locat­ing at-risk passengers in a fast and efficient manner is paramount to limiting contagion spread.

Theresa Jefferson and Gloria Phillips-Wren discuss modeling for disaster response. This is vital for practitioner/manager decision making to reduce the impact of a natural or man-made disaster. The authors examine the concept of technology embeddedness, noting that emergency managers must trust the technology and show a preference to use it prior to an actual disaster; the time to integrate technology into disaster recovery operations is not during a disaster. They explain how to effectively appropriate, integrate, and use modeling technologies for disaster response and, therefore, recovery.

Theresa Jefferson and Gloria Phillips-Wren discuss modeling for disaster response. This is vital for practitioner/manager decision making to reduce the impact of a natural or man-made disaster. The authors examine the concept of technology embeddedness, noting that emergency managers must trust the technology and show a preference to use it prior to an actual disaster; the time to integrate technology into disaster recovery operations is not during a disaster. They explain how to effectively appropriate, integrate, and use modeling technologies for disaster response and, therefore, recovery.

Frederic Adam and Paidi O’Raghallaigh tackle the current healthcare crisis. They shine a light on the opportunities provided by medical decision support for clinicians and patients and identify a number of challenges to achieving connected health, which they define as “the use of technology-based solutions to deliver healthcare services remotely.” The article proposes a connected health blueprint that may well pave the way for future connected health systems.

Frederic Adam and Paidi O’Raghallaigh tackle the current healthcare crisis. They shine a light on the opportunities provided by medical decision support for clinicians and patients and identify a number of challenges to achieving connected health, which they define as “the use of technology-based solutions to deliver healthcare services remotely.” The article proposes a connected health blueprint that may well pave the way for future connected health systems.

The challenge for this issue was to accurately represent the diversity of research in the DSS arena while also giving a glimpse of the cutting-edge DSSs of tomorrow.

The challenge for this issue was to accurately represent the diversity of research in the DSS arena while also giving a glimpse of the cutting-edge DSSs of tomorrow.

Tom Butler and Leona O’Brien provide a timely perspective on AI in the financial industry. Their article provides a pragmatic perspective on the capabilities of AI and pours cold water on some of the hyperbolic claims made about AI and ML in the fintech and regtech space. The authors suggest a direction and guidelines for future research for AI to realize its potential in the financial services sector.

Tom Butler and Leona O’Brien provide a timely perspective on AI in the financial industry. Their article provides a pragmatic perspective on the capabilities of AI and pours cold water on some of the hyperbolic claims made about AI and ML in the fintech and regtech space. The authors suggest a direction and guidelines for future research for AI to realize its potential in the financial services sector.

Ciara Heavin and Daniel Power provide an overview of the design and development of modern BI and data-driven DSSs. They identify challenges and opportunities for managers and provide a sociotechnical view of DSSs by demonstrating practical guidelines for the people, process, and technology components of modern BI and data-driven DSSs.

Ciara Heavin and Daniel Power provide an overview of the design and development of modern BI and data-driven DSSs. They identify challenges and opportunities for managers and provide a sociotechnical view of DSSs by demonstrating practical guidelines for the people, process, and technology components of modern BI and data-driven DSSs.

Here in Part V of an Executive Update series on statistical project management, we explore a common metric used in economics and market analysis: the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI).

To meet increasingly elevated customer expectations, organizations are implementing detailed strategies for distributing customer experience (CX) practices across the organization. This includes defining and standardizing the “customer journey” across various channels in order to strengthen their brand, increase customer loyalty, reduce costs, make better use of customer feedback, and so on. Organizations are also investing in leading technologies designed to enhance CX, regardless of which channels customers choose to engage with them.

Businesses are implementing analytics and trying to use data to uncover new insights about their operations, customers, suppliers, employees, and so on. Even though the idea of using analytics is exciting, these types of projects are not for the faint-hearted — at least if you’re trying to implement analytics across the entire enterprise.

The need for business architecture in organizations has never been greater than it is today, as we must continually sense and respond to opportunity and change, both of which abound. Though the business architecture discipline continues to gain traction at an ever-increasing pace, how we practice it is critical for its adoption and effectiveness. This Executive Update provides an overview of the importance of using visual techniques as part of a business architecture practice and highlights three aspects: visual design, graphic recording and facilitation, and storytelling.

For decades, the commercial relationships between companies that provided software development services and their clients have been shaped by either fixed-price/fixed-scope or time-and-materials types of contracts. The drawbacks of both approaches have long been evident, but, nevertheless, both sides have learned to use them to protect their own interests. As we explore in this Advisor, an Agile ecosystem requires the creation of a systemic setup that works with the market, not just selected vendors.

The CTOs of global industrial and manufacturing groups with technology-intensive products and services will tell you that despite the undeniable importance of startups and other external innovation ecosystem partners, internal R&D still needs to be at the core of the innovation effort. External parties are usually unable to make the necessary resource investments for long-term, core R&D. Moreover, maintain­ing leading competencies in core technology areas is usually vital to sustaining competitive advantage. However, there are multiple challenges in the traditional way of aligning R&D strategy and program activities.

The existing body of knowledge on ambidextrous principles provides a compelling academic framework but falls short of making it actionable within a real-life corporate context. To overcome this, we have developed the Ambidextrous Organization Development Canvas. In this Advisor, we share how applying our model to a broad range of organizations across multiple contexts has enabled us to decode and understand the underlying DNA of ambidextrous organizations.

Large, non-software companies introducing Agile to their organizations tend to suffer from a cognitive dissonance of sorts: we would like to have the same look and feel across the entire company, delivering stellar-quality products, yet we want to enable high-performing, self-organizing, self-managed, and self-empowered teams to deliver (or demo) at the end of each sprint. This Executive Update summarizes five key scenarios in which this cognitive dissonance becomes especially evident for large companies, particularly with non-software teams.

Identifying and developing new drugs and conducting clinical trials involve complex and lengthy (i.e., costly) processes that require researchers and drug manufacturers to integrate, manage, and analyze incredible amounts of data while at the same time collaborate with other medical research and pharma companies in their efforts. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are using artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize the discovery and evaluation of new drug compounds, to explore patient and efficacy data, and to develop and bring new therapies to market.

In statistical project management (SPM), we simplify the project management approach by eliminating many concepts that the dominant project management methodologies consider central. While I caution you to err to the side of adopting a lighter methodology rather than a thicker one, that choice is a local one and yours to make. The SPM ontology provides you with options. Here in Part IV, we examine how projects grow.