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.

This Executive Update describes the Ambidextrous Organization Development Canvas and how it enables management teams to discuss organization development issues in a common language and make decisions on development aims and organization transformation priorities. (Not a Cutter member? For a limited time, you can download your complimentary copy here.)

In the future, and as the technology advances, corporate, government, and military leaders will increasingly turn to advanced AI advisory systems to assist them with business strategy development. Such advanced AI advisory systems will likely function in the form of some kind of assistant. In this Advisor, IBM’s Project Debater application offers some insight into how such an advanced AI advisory system might function.

Yiannis Kanellopoulos addresses a key issue that we need to satisfactorily tackle: the accountability of algorithmic systems. Automated decision making can go seriously wrong, and hence, evaluating an algorithmic system and the organization that utilizes it in terms of their accountability and transparency assumes ever greater importance.

Yiannis Kanellopoulos addresses a key issue that we need to satisfactorily tackle: the accountability of algorithmic systems. Automated decision making can go seriously wrong, and hence, evaluating an algorithmic system and the organization that utilizes it in terms of their accountability and transparency assumes ever greater importance.

Daniel Power and Ciara Heavin discuss the need for — and the benefits of — automating decisions and decision processes and explore major areas of decision automation. They examine emerging, innovative sens­ing technologies — such as ambient intelligence and the IoT — that support decision automation and identify five major challenges and opportunities associated with deploying decision automation and sensors.

Daniel Power and Ciara Heavin discuss the need for — and the benefits of — automating decisions and decision processes and explore major areas of decision automation. They examine emerging, innovative sens­ing technologies — such as ambient intelligence and the IoT — that support decision automation and identify five major challenges and opportunities associated with deploying decision automation and sensors.

Mohan Babu K presents a roadmap for rolling out RPA and examines RPA solutions from key vendors. He then presents a snapshot of real-world stories of RPA adoption across industry domains and, based on his personal experience, recommends five key design topics to consider in rolling out scalable RPA solutions.

Mohan Babu K presents a roadmap for rolling out RPA and examines RPA solutions from key vendors. He then presents a snapshot of real-world stories of RPA adoption across industry domains and, based on his personal experience, recommends five key design topics to consider in rolling out scalable RPA solutions.

Aravind Ajad Yarra emphasizes that automation is most effective when humans and machines work together to deliver business outcomes and recommends that automation be designed in harmony with human experiences and business processes. He outlines three types of automation — experience automation, process automation, and platform automation — on which smart automation manifests, considers some smart automation fallacies, and examines how a design thinking approach can successfully be applied to smart automation.

Aravind Ajad Yarra emphasizes that automation is most effective when humans and machines work together to deliver business outcomes and recommends that automation be designed in harmony with human experiences and business processes. He outlines three types of automation — experience automation, process automation, and platform automation — on which smart automation manifests, considers some smart automation fallacies, and examines how a design thinking approach can successfully be applied to smart automation.