As I explore in this Advisor, I believe we are going to witness a major migration to a new spectrum of ecosystem-centric businesses that are not customer first, company first, or employee first, but are instead ecosystem first, which is a new thing altogether.

We have found the keys to using Agile methods in firmware development to be focus, flexibility, collabo­ration, tools, and teamwork. In addition, all participants (customers, product managers and owners, systems engineers, digital designers, hardware and software engineers) need to embrace the approach and work together as a team to get the job done as rapidly as possible. In this Advisor, we explore seven major issues that may come up during the product development cycle while putting Agile methods into action.

Most organizations simplify their implementation of methodologies. The quantity of knowledge in a given methodology is greater than its applied usefulness, so much of the methodology remains, probably very safely, as shelfware. In other more malignant cases where the leaders wish to see more rigor from their staff, the methodology can become overburdening. 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 is presented in this Executive Update provides you with options.

In digital businesses, fragmentation is a design decision to deal with the fluidity of the business processes and business boundaries. It’s important to understanding the consequences in terms of the energy it takes to keep information con­sistent across a fragmented data landscape. Once you can accept that the beastly nature of working with information is created by your own actions and is an inherent part of the collaboration process that makes information work for you, you can finally start to for­mulate solutions.

Blockchain (in its current and future iterations) will certainly impact various industries and governmental applications. But we will likely derive additional oppor­tunity and value from the convergence of block­chain with other emerging technologies. Data currently created and available from IoT devices, for instance, may very well benefit from some variant of blockchain. Capturing informa­tion from trusted devices and storing it in a distributed model accessible for monitoring and real-time analysis for use by AI packages could dramatically alter the speed and quality of delivery of services and/or reaction.

Agile transformation often starts as a grassroots experiment of “doers” but cannot deliver the most valu­able results — increased business agility — without involving company management to face some bold deci­sions. We invite you to view the “Rubicon decisions” described in this Executive Update as generic milestones on an Agile transformation roadmap.

Product development is challenging for both business people and engineers; one challenge is knowing which features to add and when to stop adding more features. Iterative development solves this problem. With short and repeated development cycles, the product grows. This Advisor seeks to demystify a common myth that surrounds Agile product development: the myth that only the most complete feature set will do. 

The need for efficiency in business is more imperative now than ever; we need to do more with less money, less time, and fewer resources. Yet business must also meet the needs of increasingly demanding customers who now expect 24/7 service. In this environment, businesses must consider automating tasks not only to meet increasing demands but to free up human staff to take on more strategically valuable and fulfilling tasks. Robotic process automation (RPA) can thus take on the repetitive, “non-value-adding,” laborious tasks by manipulating data and triggering actions with other software systems. In this Advisor, we explore how RPA is benefiting a number of verticals.

Here in Part XIII, the final Executive Update in Senior Consultant Curt Hall's series on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in the enterprise, we focus on findings surrounding the hype around AI and the potential for the technology to lead to social and economic disruption.

In this on-demand webinar, you’ll hear a case study on one organization’s successful journey to become ambidextrous. You’ll discover 6 major design dimensions (that break down into 72 specific capabilities) that make it possible to derive clear, actionable steps to improve the organization. You’ll learn why mastering the balance between the opposing imperatives of speed/creativity and scale/productivity systems is what makes ambidextrous organizations truly stand out.

Viewing an enterprise as an assembly of various architectures and building blocks allows the development of a coherent vision of how an organization can build the required capabilities to meet anticipated changes in its environment. Enterprise architecture, in particular, helps provide guidance and communicates how the company needs to change to survive. EA brings a shift in focus from technical systems to designing coherent sociotechnical systems that meet strategic requirements and organizational needs, such as those around workforce development, culture, structure, and processes. This Advisor introduces the Service Dominant Architecture (SDA) as a tool to support the digiti­zation of companies by structuring actors and their resources and reducing overall complexity.

For most organizations implementing customer experience (CX) management practices, it is still too early to tell if their efforts are actually paying off. This finding comes from the preliminary results of Cutter's ongoing CX management survey. This Advisor explores this finding and others and discusses why organizations are still waiting to realize measurable benefits from their initiatives.

Successful companies have achieved outstanding performance by incorporating Lean management at the center of their corporate transformations. At the same time, the potential of digital technologies to transform performance has become widely recognized. However, bringing together Lean and digital tends to bring about two conflicting scenarios: companies that realize a radical performance increase of up to 50% or more, or companies that become stuck in situations in which initiatives happen in silos, efforts lack coordination, and success is never achieved. This Executive Update offers guidance on trans­forming companies to digital Lean by developing their Lean capabilities and embedding technological building blocks into their value streams.

Here in Part XII of this ongoing series on artificial intelligence (AI) in the enterprise, we examine findings pertaining to the use cases that organizations in our study viewed as most viable for applying AI.

Here in Part XII of this ongoing series on artificial intelligence (AI) in the enterprise, we examine findings pertaining to the use cases that organizations in our study viewed as most viable for applying AI.

In this Advisor, the author recommends, based on his personal experience, five key design topics to consider in rolling out scalable robotic process automation solutions. Above all, business stakeholders will expect attention to detail when it comes to robots that operate with live financial, customer, employee, and other corporate data.

In today’s business world, there have been significant changes in two basic dimensions in which companies operate: (1) there is an unparalleled requirement to consider potential extensions to the scope of the business (space); and (2) there is a huge acceleration in the required pace of the business (time). This Advisor explores the forces behind space extension and time acceleration.

Antifragile Systems Design requires an organization to move as one toward solving the problem of complexity, which means changing the perspective from “us versus them” (IT versus business) to simply “us” (business). The steps outlined in this Advisor require a mix of skills within business, business architecture, and software engineering. However, this is not simply a business activity or a software design activity and cannot be divided into different tasks for different silos; each step in the process creates feedback loops to ensure that answers arrived at are coherent. Business leaders, business/enterprise architects, and software architects all need to engage with the process to make it work. 

During this webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Johan Treutiger and Par Helgesson address the four key questions your organization should consider in order to become digitally mature enough to compete with “digitally native” rivals. They demonstrate the six areas of innovation that are found in successful digital operating models, and you will discover why it’s vital to transform in a way that simultaneously preserves, enhances, and expands your core business.

In Part VI of this Executive Update series, we take a look at “the procrastination metrics" of V5  and V8.

Shortfalls in the risk management approaches many companies currently take can leave them dangerously exposed. These companies either have no corporate-level mechanisms for monitoring and acting on risk exposure or gather potentially relevant data but fail to develop appropriate metrics to support effective monitoring, control, and timely remediation. These metrics can take the form of key risk indicators (KRIs), which all levels of management can use to provide evidence of the effectiveness of the implemented risk management strategies. In this Advisor, we share some features of effective KRI implementation.

Our behavior style is based on other people’s perceptions of us, not on how we see ourselves. There is no good or bad style. We all, unconsciously, seek out others who have a style similar to our own, and we can all tell, again unconsciously, who has such a style and who doesn’t. Having the knowledge to predict the interaction problems we may encounter with other people provides us with a basis for improving the quality of our interactions. This improvement in our “situational awareness” gives us the ability to better control the outcomes of our interactions with others.

Digital technology has a major role to play in the organizations of the future, but in order to reap the full benefits of these new technologies, organizations must continue to evolve on a daily basis. In this Advisor, we identify four strategic imperatives for organizations to consider as they continue on their journey to achieve a new digital norm, in which the focus moves beyond tactical cost reduction or operational enhancement toward the holistic enhancement of value propositions.

In this webinar with Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Dr. Patrick Haibach, you’ll find out how robotic process automation is augmenting the workforce in a variety of companies. You’ll learn the ways organizations are using the bot technology. And you’ll discover what the next era of automation will look like.

We have done reasonably well, evolving the architecture discipline over the last couple of decades to a point where we are generally able to align the architecture foundation’s progress with a system’s progress. However, a system is only one piece in the system of systems: the enterprise, as it evolves over time. We may win the battle in the finite game of a single capability. But do we have the staying power to win in the infinite game that enterprises must play in? That is the key question that this Advisor raises.