Expert Guidance to Ensure Business Agility & Top-notch Systems & Software
Make your software, systems, and software organization a source of sustainable competitive advantage in an era characterized by constant change. Cutter’s community of international experts provides a steady stream of alerts, updates, reports, and virtual events to keep your teams on the cutting edge of new developments in software engineering excellence, product management, and enterprise agility.
The Forces of Space Extension and Time Acceleration
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.
Thoughts on a Project-Volatility Metric, Part VI: V5 and V8
In Part VI of this Executive Update series, we take a look at “the procrastination metrics" of V5 and V8.
Insurtechs: Co-Creating Value-Added Services
Co-creating value-added services requires new technical capabilities, mostly enabled by new digital technologies. Thus, interconnectivity, scalability, modularity, and interoperability are key building blocks of platforms and, consequently, need to be viewed as new design imperatives aiming at the effective reuse and integration of technical functions (e.g., authorization or display functionalities). Reuse and integration especially require new capabilities. In this context, the inside-out and outside-in openness of platforms play a key role and become a strategic mandate.
Making Retrospectives Useful, Part II: Doing Something with Lessons Learned
When I worked with the Air Force years ago, they had a requirement for every program to capture lessons learned when the product was delivered. The programs that I worked with faithfully carried out this mandate and developed reams of reports that were compiled as lessons learned databases. Unfortunately, there was no requirement to review these databases in anticipation of new starts or to make policy/procedure corrections. As a result, the suggestions and experience that they contained was often lost. Let’s see what we can do to fix this at each of the levels of retrospective.
Making Retrospectives Useful, Part I: Capturing Lessons Learned
One of the techniques people in the Agile community argue for is retrospectives. A retrospective refers to a meeting held at the end of an iteration where teammates reflect on what they experienced and recommend improvements. It is an important tool because it allows the team to take advantage of their lessons learned. The bottom line is that organizations need to put processes in place to facilitate sharing. Besides being easy to use, developers need to be motivated to use these processes, or else the databases that are provided will remain unused.
Is an Agile Firmware Approach Possible?
This Executive Update takes a closer look at being Agile when it comes to firmware. We begin with some tutorial information. Next, we discuss the firmware development process. Finally, we explore the issues typically encountered and identify ways some have taken to resolve them.
Streamlining Agile at Scale
Nowadays, there is a huge popular demand for Agile as a means to enable change and accelerate value. Popularity, however, is something other than reality; for most companies, the introduction of Agile requires a significant mindset shift. This almost always meets resistance from several directions in the organization. In addition, Agile adoption is often accompanied by some element of inefficiency and chaos if left unguided. The authors of this Advisor describe some specific ways organizations have combined architecture with Agile thinking and methods to improve their results.
Thoughts on a Project-Volatility Metric, Part V: V6 and V7
Milestones are just an independent, simple, one-level hierarchy that stands side by side with our object list. That said, when milestone commitments (estimated end dates) change — or when teams deliver work ahead of, or lagging behind, the milestone estimated end date — these all become important changes and outcomes that we need to monitor. Monitoring these changes gives us insight into the nature of project scope changes and the interaction between our project management team and IT governance.