Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders
Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans — you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.
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Insight
I wonder what Marx would have observed regarding the history of IT projects in California. Last month, Elaine Howle, the state's auditor, released yet another report detailing California's continuing IT project management misadventures.
Tricks and Traps of Offshoring
Offshoring can be a dirty word to some, but I much prefer our connected globe and the access to great skills at low cost. But this Executive Update isn't about the politics of offshoring; it's about the tricks and traps. Offshoring sensibly can have great results, be quick (with good follow-the-sun practices), and cost a fraction of what it might cost onshore. It isn't easy, however, and it isn't for the impatient.
Enterprises need architecture because of complexity; an architecture explicates the essence of an enterprise's capabilities and qualities. We can consider an architect to be an enterprise of sorts, too -- an enterprise, with some specific qualities. Just as architecture quality attributes make a system effective, so does an architect's qualities make the individual who acts in that role successful.
This Executive Report covers the benefits, considerations, and key steps involved in developing IoT-connected products and services, including connected device development, connectivity issues, sensors, supporting infrastructure, cloud-based IoT platforms, data storage and analysis requirements, and security and privacy.
Although very new, the predictive API (or PAPI) concept is important. With PAPIs, we see the direct availability of machine language analysis to create predictions in a manner that can easily be integrated with other APIs. This can be employed to create sophisticated mashups with predictive capability for use in decision making. It is linkage to decision making and the ability instantly to invoke machine language prediction from diverse realms that makes PAPI important. While relatively few examples exist today, the development of the API economy and the further progress of big data will ensure that many more PAPIs are developed in more diverse areas.
Here PPM Comes Again
This morning we happened to notice an announcement of a project portfolio management (PPM) conference for this summer. And Cutter's Summit in Boston features a Wednesday morning (6 May) roundtable on PPM.
Because of the importance of documentation, just like a building architect would do for a construction project, EA has a vital role to play in ensuring that organizations carefully plan and execute transformation initiatives against a blueprint with a current and target state.

