Things that are manufactured need to be handled in the supply chain all the way from basic components down to the finished product arriving at the customer’s doorsteps or shop shelves. But as those “things” become smarter, the physical value chains and information processes converge.

Transformation leaders need to balance the pressures of delivering incremental value in short sprints to the customer or consumer to demonstrate value with the need to ensure that they leverage the best possible enterprise resources and align with broader corporate goals and strategies.

Building AI systems is a huge undertaking. Therefore, most companies should focus on helping employees adjust to the new world of AI, curating the right data and leaving the mechanics of building AI systems to vendors.

In this on-demand webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Gustav Toppenberg explores how a powerful digital backbone can facilitate rapid innovation and responsiveness — keys to successful digital transformation.

Communication is difficult. It turns out that this approach of opening minds to the potential benefits of opposing ideas can be very valuable. Time and again we find that the best approach is at neither end of the scale, but instead at a “sweet spot” that balances the forces and harvests the best aspects of either end of the scale.

CIOs and their teams must make sure the business case for cloud migration is aligned with key business priorities, and that their migration plan addresses a few fundamental key success factors.

In this Executive Update, we explore some of the truths about the business architect role, potential focuses for the role, career path options, and what the future holds for a discipline that finds itself at the heart of business and technology change.

This Executive Update discusses the thinking behind employing artificial intelligence (AI) in an organization through “augmenta­tion.” It presents a case study on how a superregional bank implemented a cogni­tive contact center by using an AI framework called HALO — Human Augmented Learning Organization —  and showcases the meaning of “AI as a practice” within an organization.

This Executive Update discusses the thinking behind employing artificial intelligence (AI) in an organization through “augmenta­tion.” It presents a case study on how a superregional bank implemented a cogni­tive contact center by using an AI framework called HALO — Human Augmented Learning Organization —  and showcases the meaning of “AI as a practice” within an organization.

What are disruptors doing that we can learn from and shape the EA toward?

Whether AI eventually lives up to all the hype obviously remains to be seen; however, I expect that we are going to witness some innovative and disrupting applications in the not-too-distant future.

Srinivas Garapati explores important philosophies and the mindset behind Agile and Lean. He starts with the thinking patterns required to be successful. He then considers the nature of an Agile organization and finishes with strategies for organizational design.

Jutta Eckstein and John Buck walk us through an enterprise-aware approach that helps optimize the process flow of value streams. The authors show how to apply “Open Space” and “Sociocracy” to support enterprise Agile transformation. Open Space is a technique where everyone is invited to put forward ideas that they’re passionate about; if there is enough interest in the idea people will get behind it and make it happen. Sociocracy is a form of democracy for use in organizations, building feedback mechanisms into the organizational structure itself that ensure every voice is heard. Both strategies promote enterprise awareness, increasing collaboration between people in what would normally be disparate parts of the organization and helping optimize flow as the situation evolves.

Gill Kent and Robin Harwood provide a case study about linking Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) workflows and user stories. They focus on the importance of initial modeling during what they call the Discovery phase of a digital trans­formation project. In their example, they followed a pragmatic, Agile approach to modeling the business and their host systems to gain important insight into the enterprise transformation scope and a vision of the required system change for their endeavor. This enabled them to establish a business/stakeholder vision that captured a clear scope for the following phases. With an initial technical strategy/architecture identified, the team was able to name a backlog of architecturally relevant stories, mitigating the risk of late identification of system integration requirements and the potential for significant rework. In short, a pragmatic investment in initial modeling and planning paid off in huge divi­dends for their Agile team.

In his discussion of the five levels of a digital business ecosystem (DBE), Jaco Viljoen explores the idea that “choice is good because context counts.” The five levels, each with its own set of capabilities that build one on top of another, are: waterfall/traditional, hybrid Agile (a combination of waterfall and Agile), regular delivery, continuous delivery, and continuous exploration. The five DBEs provide insight into which process-building blocks to apply. Viljoen also discusses using a framework to achieve business agility at scale.

Matthew Ganis and Michael Ackerbauer describe how to build awesome teams. You want to be Agile (of course!) and adopt Agile practices. Awesome teams have the skills and resources to fulfill their mission and include the right mix of personalities. The authors argue that the organization is really a “team of teams” that needs a shared purpose and way of working to make the abstract concrete. According to them, awesome teams build on a common foundation based on the concept of Breakthrough Thinking/diversity of thought.

Gene Callahan has some great advice for build­ing awesome people. Beginning with the idea of the division of labor, Callahan walks us through the history of how traditional organizations find themselves as a collection of specialists who struggle to be responsive to the changing marketplace. He then examines the need for people who are generalizing specialists (people who can collaborate effectively and learn from one another).

John Hogan provides some insights on delighting customers. He argues for a customer-focused organizational structure, with Agile teams supported by Agile leadership. Hogan describes the importance of goal setting to focus on delighting customers, supported by incremental planning and delivery to do so. 

Business agility is something that emerges over time through a lot of hard work. Excelling at it requires true agility across all of IT, not just software development, as well as a disciplined organization that can leverage the IT capability. And, because the environment in which your organization operates evolves over time, and your competitors and partners also evolve, business agility proves to be a moving target in practice.

This Advisor explores the mechanics behind various decision-making models and examines the boundaries and use cases for each. It discusses the qualitative value that experience or intuition can add to data-driven quantitative analysis, thereby providing the best approach to decision making.

AI’s disruption has yet to be felt in the workplace, but there are waves of changes coming our way that will alter the way we work as well as the type of work we do.

We believe that at the heart of the ability to manage an ongoing and multilayered organizational transformation rests a sophisticated enterprise architecture capability with a specific charter to act as a transformation engine connecting strategic intent and execution excellence.

Designing cognitive computing systems (CCSs) requires a strong case for the investment into those systems. Organizations must not only be able to justify the initial investment into developing a CCS, but also think through the investments that will be needed to ensure it can be refined and enhanced over time.

This Executive Update presents a framework in the form of processes, techniques, measurement metrics, and best practices to guide you toward successful API monetization.

This Executive Update presents a framework in the form of processes, techniques, measurement metrics, and best practices to guide you toward successful API monetization.