Advisors provide a continuous flow of information on the topics covered by each practice, including consultant insights and reports from the front lines, analyses of trends, and breaking new ideas. Advisors are delivered directly to your email inbox, and are also available in the resource library.

Is It Time to Say "Bye Bye" to Best Buy?

Robert Charette

I am once again back at my local McDonald’s sipping a cup of coffee and eyeing the competitive landscape that continues to change before me. This particular McDonald’s sits in Central Park, Virginia, one of the largest concentrations of retail stores in the US.


Big Agile, Big Change

Ken Orr

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:


Cloud Architecture: Leveraging Strategies, Blueprints, and Roadmaps -- What's Different Today?

Tushar Hazra

Most IT professionals agree that the implementation of cloud computing has reached greater acceptance in the IT industry over the past five or six years.


When Communicating, Use Format to Your Advantage

Laura Schildkraut

When you open an email and see a big chunk of text, are you excited to dig right in and read it? Probably not. (Yet, do you ever find yourself sending those types of emails? Probably.) The reason why you lack excitement in reading such an email is obvious. Large chunks of text generally don't get the extra thought required to pare them down and helpfully section them off with subheads. Such content is basically a first draft, with possibly a once-over edit pass. It takes less time to construct.


Industry Data Models

Babu Ramakrishnan

The data warehouse, unlike the other IT systems in an enterprise, is an exclusive data platform with a data model as its backbone. In general, one may conceive an IT system to be a combination of processes and data. However, the data warehouse is only about data, and even the processes within a warehouse are data-centric. This trait of data warehouses prompts different vendors, big and small, to develop data models for every industry (called "industry data models") as a standard offering to decrease the turnaround time in developing data warehouses.


IT Value Creation

Robert Austin, Richard Nolan

A remarkably prescient group of early technology pioneers first conceived the vision underlying modern, Internet-based IT value creation. In a 1945 Atlantic Magazine article, "As We May Think," Vannevar Bush anticipated the interconnectedness and indexing structures of the Web. Later, in 1968, J.C.R.


Agile Code

Steve Berczuk

Much like agile requirements aim toward a goal, agile engineering practices help teams write code that meets the goals of an iteration and changes direction easily. To be an agile team, you need agile code. The agility of a code base is related to the architecture, development practices, and the delivery model. As working software is the main way of evaluating progress on an agile project, agile engineering practices can drive agile planning techniques when they are lacking.


What's New in TOGAF 9.1?

Mike Rosen

At the end of last year (December 2011), The Open Group released the updated version 9.1 of TOGAF.


Tackling Today's Enterprise Security Challenges

Mike Rosen

[From the Editor: This week's Advisor is from Cutter Director Mike Rosen's introduction to the April 2012 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Tackling Today's Enterprise Security Challenges" (Vol. 25, No. 4).


Applying BI in Education: Domains and Goals

Curt Hall

I've been examining the application of BI and data warehousing in education. Like organizations in other lines of business, educational institutions are seeking to reap the benefits offered through better data management and the application of BI analytics.


Creating a Governance Brand with Your Own Lingua Franca

Carl Pritchard

"Lingua franca" is common working language. It is used to bridge gaps in cultures, in organizations, and between individuals. The key is that it's "common." Thus, any discussion about your own lingua franca might seem oxymoronic. It's not.


Pitfalls of Agile XXI: Lost Contact

Jens Coldewey

On occasion, I have witnessed seemingly excellent agile teams fail. The developers and testers are fine craftsmen building astonishing software. Management has understood the nuts and bolts of self-organization and does a perfect job in supporting the teams.


My Newfound Appreciation for BPM

Frank Teti

In my more recent engagements, I have had the opportunity to move away from consulting within the infrastructure world of SOA and into the realm of pure business process management (BPM). Prior to that, I had more of a conceptual appreciation as to how BPM technology could integrate within an SOA.


One Organization's Approach to the Mobile App

Maria Lee

In February 2010, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implemented its first mobile app: the FCC Mobile Broadband Test (see "About the Consumer Broadband Test (Beta)"). Computech, Inc., in a joint development effort with M-Lab and Ookla, led the building of this crowdsourced app, which was designed to provide a quick, simple way to check the performance of an Internet connection against the advertised broadband speed.


Gaining Customer Insight

Ramaswami Mohandoss

Habits form an important and inevitable part of our lives. We are all about baselining our routine activities into habits and conserving our energy for more productive and interesting tasks. These habits exist as patterns in customer behavior data (e.g., clickstream, logs, social media, sales). The right kind of data, aided by an intelligent analytical solution, can identify these habits and yield valuable customer insights.


Reflections on Innovation -- Part VI: More About Art

Lee Devin

In my last Advisor ("Reflections on Innovation — Part V: Words, Words, Words"), I suggested that you read Ian McGilchrist's book The Master and His Emissary, where McGilchri


Process as a Service

Israel Gat

A lively debate about the nature of the agile process often erupts in my executive workshops. Participants, who have not been exposed to agile methods, usually expect the software process (or any process, for that matter) to be predictable.


Improve Your Architectural Skills with Critical Thinking

Mike Rosen

One of the most important skills of an architect (be it a business architect, IT architect, or enterprise architect) is that of “critical thinking.” It has been defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking as: "the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or gener


Improve Your Architectural Skills with Critical Thinking

Mike Rosen

One of the most important skills of an architect (be it a business architect, IT architect, or enterprise architect) is that of “critical thinking.” 


Gaining Customer Insight

Ramaswami Mohandoss

Habits form an important and inevitable part of our lives. We are all about baselining our routine activities into habits and conserving our energy for more productive and interesting tasks. These habits exist as patterns in customer behavior data (e.g., clickstream, logs, social media, sales). The right kind of data, aided by an intelligent analytical solution, can identify these habits and yield valuable customer insights.


How Some Enterprises Are Using Hadoop

Curt Hall

Companies have used Hadoop mainly to process high volumes of unstructured data for Internet operations.


Inflection Points for Decisions and Profit, Part II

Robert Charette

In my previous Advisor ("Inflection Points for Decisions and Profit, Part I"), I pointed out that all exchanges of goods and services are exchanges of risk and opportunity between the pa


(Finding) Genuine Sponsors: Processes Are Not Their Problem

Hillel Glazer

Common wisdom in process improvement efforts includes the notion of a "sponsor." The sponsor is a person (sometimes a small group of people) within an organization who buys into -- often literally as much as figuratively -- the improvement effort.


The Value Proposition

Tushar Hazra

As business architecture becomes more mainstream, many large and complex enterprises across the private and public sectors are embracing its primary concepts. For most of these organizations, BA plays a significant role in defining the primary value proposition for the enterprise architecture.


Cloud Security: A Red Herring?

Claude Baudoin

It may seem reckless to challenge the notion that cloud computing poses new security risks. IT magazines are full of dire warnings, and cloud providers, as well as security consortia, are now holding regular conferences such as SecureCloud. Yet some claims may be overstated, while others are ignored.