Strategic advice to leverage new technologies
Technology is at the heart of nearly every enterprise, enabling new business models and strategies, and serving as the catalyst to industry convergence. Leveraging the right technology can improve business outcomes, providing intelligence and insights that help you make more informed and accurate decisions. From finding patterns in data through data science, to curating relevant insights with data analytics, to the predictive abilities and innumerable applications of AI, to solving challenging business problems with ML, NLP, and knowledge graphs, technology has brought decision-making to a more intelligent level. Keep pace with the technology trends, opportunities, applications, and real-world use cases that will move your organization closer to its transformation and business goals.
Insight
WHY E-PROJECTS?
A new type of project has emerged in the last few years, one that results from the combination of two dominant global trends in the new economy -- accelerated change and the dominance of e-business models. Just as "managing by projects" is the natural response to change, e-projects are the response to that change within the e-conomy.
As we enter the 21st century, the IT industry exhibits two bewilderingly contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, we are constantly being told of the savage commercial pressure under which business operates, the cutthroat competitiveness of global markets, and the consequent need to squeeze out every last drop of productivity.
Executive Update
Debating After Action Reports and Heavy Versus Light Methods
Two recent e-Project Management E-Mail Advisorsfrom Jim Highsmith (director of Cutter Consortium's e-Project Management practice area) and Lou Russell (a senior consultant on this and the Business-IT Strategies service) sparked commentary from subscribers and Cutter senior consultants. We present the original pieces and the responses here, including that of Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Ram Reddy.
It's past the point at which one needs to describe component applications to prove the technology works or to prove the value of component reuse; most companies are convinced. The problem they are focused on is creating organizational structures to make it happen. Nevertheless, every so often I come across an implementation story that is so good that it's worth passing on.
As I talk with people at companies that are working on large-scale e-business integration efforts, I'm told, over and over again, that integration is the key. If a company can't get its large, diverse legacy applications to talk to one another in an efficient manner, it can't hope to provide the kind of customer support that Web users want.
The recent news of Apple's financial problems makes it hard to resist pointing out that I predicted this three years ago when Steve Jobs became the temporary CEO of Apple. I would never advise anyone to make stock market decisions based on my predictions. The market jerks up and down as participants identify possible short-term gains or losses.
