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.
Subscribe to Arthur D. Little's Culture & Leadership Newsletter
Insight
This issue ushers in a big innovation for us. Along with our standard survey-based installments of CBR, we will now have shorter, focused "opinion pieces," which will better enable our contributors from the academic and practice traditions to address emerging technologies, new trends, or old but still polarizing issues with precision and efficiency.
A true craftsman, be he a writer, an actor, or a carpenter, is known for his artistry and the ability to execute tasks to a high level of perfection. When we examine the history of software engineering, however, the components necessary to place this profession alongside other esteemed crafts are often overlooked. Software engineering began similarly to other crafts, where over time rigor and discipline evolved as the profession matured and advanced.
After 60-plus years, it's high time our industry matured into an engineering discipline. By now generic, adaptable design models should have emerged and stood the test of time to become industry-wide standards. Such models would entail the automation of most manual -- and hence error-prone -- aspects of software construction, fine-tuning, and evolution.
In recent years, the "software craftsmanship" movement has articulated a sensibility long shared by senior developers entrusted to build high-functioning, complex systems.
The promoters of craftsmanship1, 2 have brought to the discourse about software development a fresh emphasis on care, creativity, and professionalism. Craftsmanship is attractive to developers and business alike; too much poor software is produced nowadays, and such software is in nobody's interest. However, neither is idealized software craftsmanship, which ignores business realities. The gap between turning out software and crafting physical products is deep and multidimensional.
Abstract
Traditional process/compliance-centered approaches to IT governance have not proven totally effective against the general malaise of often poor return from IT investments. This Executive Report by Dr.
When we hear the term "IT governance," our minds invariably are drawn to such topics as management, control, compliance, and ultimately the avoidance of the multitude of IT disasters that litter our IT implementation experience to date. After more than half a century of experience, why are we still bemoaning embarrassing time and cost overruns, functional mismatches, and IT infrastructure issues?
Domain
IT industry
Assertion 190Society is becoming increasingly dependent on complex, technology-rich systems. With increased complexity comes increased potential for disaster, since we currently lack the ability to understand how such large-scale, interconnected systems behave and we cannot appreciate the growing level of systemic risk they present.