This article focuses primarily on the financial services industry, noting the importance of connectivity, digital assets, and regulation. The authors recognize the opportunities and disruptions that fintech creates. They look at how incumbents must respond opportunistically and defensively to fintech adoption. 

This article focuses primarily on the financial services industry, noting the importance of connectivity, digital assets, and regulation. The authors recognize the opportunities and disruptions that fintech creates. They look at how incumbents must respond opportunistically and defensively to fintech adoption. 

This issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal (CBTJ) describes the range of methods, tools, techniques, and applications of the fintech revolution. The articles demonstrate fintech’s importance and explore the diff­erent levels of fintech technologies, experimentation, and applications. While many questions remain, fintech is unstoppable. Institutions, companies, and whole countries are adopting it for financial, political, and even military purposes. Make no mistake: fintech is a game-changer.

This issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal (CBTJ) describes the range of methods, tools, techniques, and applications of the fintech revolution. The articles demonstrate fintech’s importance and explore the diff­erent levels of fintech technologies, experimentation, and applications. While many questions remain, fintech is unstoppable. Institutions, companies, and whole countries are adopting it for financial, political, and even military purposes. Make no mistake: fintech is a game-changer.

Many technologies exist today that have the potential to change the manner in which we get work done. Currently, the software developer job is heavily labor-intensive. Yes, we use software tools to perform many of the repetitive tasks; however, for the most part, the programming job is performed by highly talented individuals who specify, design, code, and test complex pieces of code and make them work. We have attempted to automate such tasks, but we can best characterize current efforts as assistance (helping workers by providing guidance and information) rather than automation (replacing humans with machines). In this Executive Update, we identify 20 technologies that have the potential to alter this picture in both the near and long term. 

Many technologies exist today that have the potential to change the manner in which we get work done. Currently, the software developer job is heavily labor-intensive. Yes, we use software tools to perform many of the repetitive tasks; however, for the most part, the programming job is performed by highly talented individuals who specify, design, code, and test complex pieces of code and make them work. We have attempted to automate such tasks, but we can best characterize current efforts as assistance (helping workers by providing guidance and information) rather than automation (replacing humans with machines). In this Executive Update, we identify 20 technologies that have the potential to alter this picture in both the near and long term. 

This Advisor considers the development of a continuous deployment process for software by combining Agile methods and DevOps. After first looking at the salient characteristics of both techniques, we discuss why bringing together Agile and DevOps — and the resultant continuous delivery and deployment chain — is truly worthwhile.

Years ago, I started down the track of data democratization upon reading some Cutter Consortium Executive Reports, where the authors generally posited that if you want to manage an asset better, you must manage the data around the asset better. That may be all you have to do. But since we have to manage our companies through data, we need lots of people to do it. Hence, we need data democratization. In this Advisor, we explore how organizations can achieve data democratization.

The increasing importance of a coherent organizational strategy to maximize the exploitation of data for grow­ing a digital business is clear. There is a need to locate, consolidate, classify, and access the necessary data — often data of many different formats stored in different areas of the enterprise as well as external data — to drive many different aspects of a successful digital business. To achieve these types of capabilities in an efficient and scalable manner, the digital business needs to be able to identify, extract, transform, contextualize, and dis­tribute the necessary data. The data warehouse or data lake is a critical part of this data ecosystem, and many different aspects of the digital business can exploit this resource in a consistent way by means of a shared metadata framework.

Among the most important developments concerning AI and blockchain are the new, emerging business models, enabled by these technologies, that are beginning to appear in various industries. This is especially true when it comes to fintech, and the combining of blockchain and AI to create new financial platforms that can provide virtual banking services to people who currently are not served or who are underserved by more traditional banking services offers a good example.

As a leader, you don’t have to be the one who conceives innovative ideas, but you do need to pave the way for curious and creative employees. Join Professor Roberto for this discussion on unlocking creativity and start removing obstacles to the creative process, and supporting an atmosphere of imagination and innovation in your organization.

For almost 20 years, cloud and related technologies have been transforming entire industries. Interestingly, most of the discussions around transformation tend to focus on the technical aspects, technical solutions, platforms, and various as-a-service offerings. Although the technology perspective is very important, it’s not the most critical. Truly transformational projects require a much broader perspective. A truly successful digitization project will change a company to its core. In this Advisor, we explore the impact of cloud-enabled transformation on company culture and identity.

As in the early days of the electric utility, all major cloud providers started off with a “vertically inte­grated” direct sales model (i.e., they also played the role of cloud supplier). However, several major cloud providers have started supporting sales through an indirect sales channel, leveraging specialist partners to reach out to the many different industries that could benefit from cloud services. They have allowed those channel partners to step into the billing chain, thus creating a more unique cloud supplier role, much like those electricity suppliers that stepped into the billing chain between electricity providers and electricity consumers.

As part of an ongoing series on artificial intelligence (AI) in the enterprise, in this Executive Update, we turn specifically to AI development platform preferences, including open source and commercial providers’ development tools and AI-as-a-service platforms. 

As part of an ongoing series on artificial intelligence (AI) in the enterprise, in this Executive Update, we turn specifically to AI development platform preferences, including open source and commercial providers’ development tools and AI-as-a-service platforms. 

Based on our client experience, a significant opportunity to improve the business value of both enterprise architecture (EA) and Agile lies in combining their practices. Several frameworks could help in this sense, and with the right vision in mind, companies can increase their ROI for both EA and Agile. In practice, we have seen several ways in which organizations combine EA with Agile thinking and methods to break through the anti-patterns and improve results. This Advisor highlights a useful example from a Netherlands central gov­ernment client and comes down to the adoption of Agile architectural approaches described in SAFe 4.5.

About a decade ago, Cutter Consortium published my Executive Update series on the project-volatility metric, which examined the notion of project volatility and set forth the assumptions that underlie my own project-planning approach. The framework has grown tremendously. Thus, we are returning to this Update series with a revised Part II and a plethora of Updates to come.

Some of the more interesting developments with artificial intelligence (AI) involve its application in media and entertainment. There is a great deal of innovation underway to utilize AI in practically all aspects of media and entertainment — from content creation, procurement, categorization, and distribution to display, intellectual property (IP) protection, marketing, audience measurement, and customer service.

By learning to simply recognize complexity when we see it — and learning that we cannot engage with it through reductionism — could save ourselves a lot of pain and allow our efforts to focus on quality, rather than on trying to do the impossible. By seeking to understand complexity instead of hiding it, we can build better-quality software with less stress.

My colleagues and I have visualized a line-of-business (LOB) application as a collection of finite state machines (FSMs) that model subjects and their interactions with each other. This immediately brings some much-needed structure to our application, while at the same time allowing it to be perfectly extensible. This structure will help us to automate the generation of LOB apps, as the problem now simplifies to specifying FSMs.

Do not underestimate the pace of evolution of cloud technologies. If no one in the organization watches (and understands) the new cloud delivery technologies, you may choose the wrong one, or you may be misled by a vendor that will fail to mention a better option because the vendor does not offer it.

Many of the principles that were developed for the data warehouse are just as relevant today when considering the evolution to a digital business. Underpinning these principles is the implicit need for the active use and management of a coherent layer of metadata. In discussing the broader digital business, it may help to delineate the various systems and applications that occupy the landscape of such a business.

Here in Part VIII, Robin Harwood has invited me to discuss the use of the ADF in a user experience/user journey context, relating some real-world business analysis experiences in its application.

Here are the Business Agility & Software Engineering Excellence articles that garnered the most feedback from Cutter Members and clients in 2018. Look for these lists from each of our four practice areas, and rediscover Cutter's most intriguing articles of the year!

Here are the Business Technology & Digital Transformation Strategies articles that garnered the most feedback from Cutter Members and clients in 2018. Look for these lists from each of our four practice areas, and rediscover Cutter’s most intriguing articles of the year!