Digital Strategy, Operating Models & Technology Implementation Insight

In the face of COVID-19 over the past year, companies across the globe have had to act quickly to adapt to new realities — or risk certain ruin. It is no longer “business as usual.” The global pandemic has undeniably changed the status quo of HR management. In this Executive Update, we reflect on the use of technology to enable HR’s new, critical role in light of social distancing and smart working.

This Executive Update seeks to help IT better advocate for cloud. First, we offer a solution to cloud’s most significant financial risk. Next, we translate some IT concepts into their financial equivalents.

Last year, Barry M. O’Reilly predicted that 2020 would be “the year that Agile got found out.” Well, we all know that 2020 took an unexpected turn. So, in this Executive Update, let’s look deeper into the outcome of my prediction and explore how Agile and agility, especially in the face of a global pandemic, has truly panned out since my “before the world changed” assertion.

Łukasz Paciorkowski and Piotr Karolczak present a digital twin maturity model that can help organizations make better decisions around the structure of digital twins applied to industrial applications. The model presents several capabilities that organizations can explore across several maturity levels.

Jacqueline Corbett, Adnène Hajji, and Sehl Mellouli discuss how digital twins can promote smart, agile, sustainable cities. First, the authors present the concept of organizational agility and the ways it promotes organizational success. Then, they explain how digital twin dimensions and capabilities support and contribute to organizational agility. The authors also present some examples and conclude with recom­mendations for cities in their consideration for the use of digital twins.

Jon Geater investigates the relationship of security and trustworthiness to digital twins. He looks at the possible security impact of the analog world on the digital world and how to address it. His application of the “nature versus nurture” analogy to digital twins is compelling. Geater discusses several security-related topics that organizations should consider, and he ends with a look at how to address digital twin security as we move forward.

Madison White explores how digital transformation in the transportation industry is being combined with automotive digital twins to produce the next generation of autonomous vehicles. She looks at the challenges facing production-scale deployment of digital twins, including digital twin accuracy, connec­tivity, data accuracy, interoperability/standardization, and trust/security. She concludes with the cost benefits of developing a vehicle using digital twins, including predicting maintenance, and thus lowering cost of ownership during the lifetime of a vehicle, and cleaner air.