Computing inspired by the design of brains is rapidly progressing. Very rapidly.

Empowerment doesn't mean "do what you want" but rather "do what is needed to reach your goals."

The ability to attain strategic and organizational agility directly relates to the organization's ability to prepare stakeholders for change. In other words, a sustained state of change readiness coincides with the ability to attain organizational agility. Among other practices, it is vital to manage change in an organized way that is pervasive and well understood across the organization.

Social media is evolving into one of the most, if not the most, important consumer medium -- one that is on pace to soon form the foundation for consumer profiling, customer interaction, and analytics. It isn't there quite yet because of remaining issues to settle -- technical as well as societal -- but it is certainly on the horizon.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is going to have a tremendous impact on environmental protection. This will come about from end-user companies, researchers, the media, environmental watchdog groups, and even ordinary citizens using wireless sensors, video cameras, and drones for real-time environmental monitoring, pollution control, and facilities management and maintenance.

I live in the greater Washington, DC, metropolitan area, and, as a result, have the joy of experiencing some of the worst traffic in the US. Couple that with the winter weather, and it can turn into a real nightmare. I grew up in Ohio. I have lived in Maine. I've seen snow. And I've seen snow managed well. Yet, every year, the Washington area experiences its fair share of snowfall. And every year, the local authorities act like they're surprised. "It SNOWED! WOW! Who knew?" There are never enough plows, salt, and stamina to stand up even against a dusting. The area is hobbled.

A software project can, of course, be characterized by various parameters. We recommend starting with the (elusively) simple question of the intrinsic nature of the project.

Manufacturing and process industries are making extensive use of sensors, mobile, and other Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to connect, monitor, and measure equipment, vehicles, material, and processes. This trend is starting to accelerate and is expected to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

For the uninitiated, a Kanban board is a rectangular area with vertical columns. Cards representing work items go in each column and can be easily moved from column to column. Cards generally progress from column to column one at a time, in one direction -- typically, left to right (in English-speaking teams). When we're doing Kanban, we add some more rules of use for the Kanban board: the board helps visualize work and process flow. We use work-in-progress limits on "doing" columns to reduce thrashing caused by too much multitasking.

Essentially, business activity monitoring (BAM) data, which is collected and produced by a business process management (BPM)-type application, is just another subset of BI within the organization. BAM data may be pushed to a big data repository, but a BAM repository should never be used for big data analysis. BAM environments are characterized by online, real-time users, where throughput and performance are paramount. BAM queries and reports should be targeted to simple operational status views against optimized, normalized tables.

If we use measures properly, we do so to improve our business, organization, or our lives. In this respect, there are many times when having some data is not better than having none.

Business intelligence (BI), big data, and analytics have emerged as three of the most important business trends of the 21st century. This trajectory has unfolded from the convergence of the following technology advancements:

Although not many organizations are fully Agile at this time, those that are display the following qualities:

When there are administrative tasks that need to be done, there are certainly ways to make them less unpleasant and frustrating, and more rewarding and fulfilling. Here are seven tips for reducing the burden of governance and turning a necessary obligation into something more useful and beneficial.

The healthcare industry has embraced the Internet of Things (IoT) and is making widespread use of sensors in a range of applications and services. One key trend is the development of connected medical devices designed to be worn by patients (or implanted in them) to communicate their biosensor-based readings to wearers, physicians, and other medical personnel via Wi-Fi, cellular, or Bluetooth communications. By analyzing vital patient data and warning about changes in their health conditions or status, connected medical devices can help reduce costs, readmissions, and provide better-quality care to patients overall.

"You have reached the end of voice mail."

Recently, I have been involved in a fairly complex interactive voice response (IVR) redo, and I have begun to wonder if we have been working on the wrong technology. Most of us struggle with IVR systems more and more often, challenged to "touch 1 if ...," "touch 2 if ...," and more. Indeed, I have changed vendors a number of times after becoming frustrated with their IVR or voicemail applications.

When you introduce Agile into existing organizations, you regularly get two types of seemingly conflicting results if you ask for employee satisfaction. First you get the satisfaction boost. Once the teams have learned to deliver valuable stuff, they experience the satisfaction of accomplishment. They finally deliver and get feedback from real customers. In most organizations this leads to a significant increase in employee satisfaction. This effect is so consistent that it is one of the very few things I actually promise before starting a transition.

A business architecture function can be a sustainable option to design and implement transformation opportunities. Once an organization decides to take this path, it needs to ensure that the journey is smooth. In this Advisor (and in Figure 1), we highlight some pitfalls organizations should avoid when starting up the business architecture function:

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Cutter Fellow Bob Benson's and Pieter M. Ribbers's introduction to the January 2015 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Improving Trust and Partnership Between Business and IT" (Vol. 28, No. 1). Learn more about Cutter IT Journal .]

In current organizations that have a culture where relationships are highly valued and are most often maintained and developed through a lot of face-to-face interaction, the adoption rate for a digital platform for knowledge sharing and information integration is low. Organizations need to promote a culture that motivates staff to increase usage of digital platform for knowledge sharing. Here are some of the ways I would suggest organizations go about responding to that question.

Rigidity in an organization can have a number of significant effects, including cultural as well as process issues. Without sufficient review, the organization can become brittle and less able to adequately respond to new conditions, while seemingly remaining in compliance with all imposing standards. The brittle organization will have problems in meeting changing business conditions, and it will also be less resilient and under greater threat from sudden problems such as natural disaster or catastrophic shifts in the market or in technology.

In an Agile world, we often talk about the importance of involving the client (or key stakeholders) throughout the development cycle. My work experience mainly allowed me to work with two types of clients: internal clients (as part of the IT department in the mid-to-late 1990s) and with product management teams (from 2000 to 2010).

EA is an information and knowledge management discipline. By gathering information about the architecture, its components, and its domains, we come to understand the architectural landscape, and it is through information that we communicate our plans to change and evolve the architecture.

Contracting has a long history in IT, and most companies have experience in using contractors in various roles. Among the advantages that contract workers can provide are the following:

The Internet of Things (IoT) is about more than just sensors and a lot of data and analytics (although these certainly are key components); it also involves the application of new technologies and practices like mobile devices, collaboration, and smart networks that are literally changing how businesses operate and people work. Lately, I've been examining how such technologies are having an impact in manufacturing, engineering, and other industrial environments.