Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Despite general agreement among researchers and academics of the need for board-level involvement in IT governance, it appears that in practice this is more the exception than the rule. Given the prevalence of this issue, we have sought to answer the question, “What is the state of the art of the research domain of board-level IT governance?” In this Executive Update, we share our findings on the various determinants, theories, and outcomes surrounding board-level IT governance and share some practical guidance.

APIs are bringing about new opportunities by creating new channels for partnerships, promoting brands, and experimenting with customer-influenced innovative solutions and alternate business models. In this Advisor, I explore the spectrum of APIs. Knowing the spectrum of APIs and how they work helps formulate and guide API and software strategy, aids in decision making on interfacing architecture, and helps assess readiness from business, technical, compliance, and risk perspectives.

Empowering the people who face the customer to drive business decisions is a hallmark of the Agile organization. Agile leadership, explored in this Advisor, replaces command and control in the Agile organization.

The new frontier for competition is the entire customer experience (CX) — from thinking about a purchase to the renewal (of a service) or replacement (of a product).

The best response to digital disruption from the EA team is to examine the dis­ruption, understand the implications in terms of the components and configuration of the architecture (i.e., translate them into architectural thinking), and present options for responding as potential changes to the architecture. The important thing is to present these options as clearly as possible so that stakeholders can make architecturally informed decisions.

Understanding certain perspectives of privacy allows us to detail why it is important in the context of blockchain, distributed ledger, and smart contract technology. Thus, questioning the importance of privacy to anyone deploying the technology, using the technology, or regulating the technology, is important. How is a blockchain different than any database? How is it used differently than normal databases? What are the implications of deploying an immutable record of information in a distributed consensus network? How is the technology used in blockchains different from any other information or data storage technology? These are the questions firms should be asking as they attempt to understand the concept and its implications on an active, and evolving, basis.

Cutter Consortium’s Technical Due Diligence for Acquisitions ensures an unbiased assessment of the software, software architecture, technology, security, and technology skills of your potential acquisition. Discover the value and SWOTs of your target company’s current-state systems.

This article discusses the Industrial Internet along with the IoT applications and domains that are most likely to benefit from edge computing.