Recently, I commented on the increasing vulnerability of smart, Internet-connected devices for the home (see "Computer Security and the Internet of Things, Part I").

In a recent Advisor "Software as an Asset," I argued that most software systems are actually products that need to be managed with a product management perspective rather than a project management perspective.

Big Data is difficult to define precisely, yet we all seem to know it when we see it.

The early Web was a battleground of de facto standards and proprietary technologies with most sites (to our collective shame) bearing announcements saying, "This site is best viewed in browser X." Welcome back to the war -- only now it's, "This tree/building/menu/whatever is best viewed...." The comparison is more th

There are few things in the software development world that are as complex or difficult as understanding, documenting, and testing the business rules that go into modern decision models.

Does a comprehensive proposal replete with data points, success stories, and implementation details galore win the client over? The purpose of this article is to understand challenges in the vendor-client relationship zone and what a vendor can do to get the client to act favorably on a proposal.

While Agile development continues to flourish both on its own and in coexistence with waterfall development, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we need to pay greater attention to metrics. For smaller organizations, departments, and specialist shops, conventional metrics may not be so important.

One of the problems that business architecture attempts to solve is the lack of coalignment between strategy and changes in the enterprise. The business analyst community, through the efforts of the IIBA, wants to incorporate more business architecture thinking in its BABOK Guide. BABOK V3 puts business architecture front and center though the use of the business capability architecture (BCA). Figure 1 shows the concept map for the Situation Analysis knowledge area currently under review.

The proliferation of mobile devices for business use, driven to a considerable degree by bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives, serves to increase corporate interest in enterprise app stores.

Corporate and government security officers will want to take the next few weeks to assess and reassess their organizations' security and encryption capabilities after the most recent revelations about the US National Security Agency (NSA). Specifically, they should ask: Whose products are we using?

As I have said before, it is hard for me to put a finger on exactly what's wrong with computer and Internet security today.

For established firms, the large-scale market trends of the past 20 years have brought myriad challenges due to the still-increasing rate of change.

Business strategy is all about devising how we will compete. In a fast-paced, ever-changing world with limited resources and shifting opportunities and threats, strategy is, in essence, a matter of determining how we will create and sustain competitive distinction through compelling value propositions, taking advantage of changes in the environment and emerging opportunities and responding to threats.

Egyptians throughout history have been known as successful entrepreneurs in their Africa-Middle East region -- moving across nations and being actively involved in trading and growing businesses in different sectors. This is something that somehow changed during the last few centuries, when the aspirations of many Egyptians became about working for the government or the public sector. The motive was to secure a job with minimal daily challenges and risk. Some would wait for years until a government employment opportunity surfaced.

What is the most important resource in the world today? Hint: it's not oil or gas or precious metals -- although they're certainly valuable. It's data.

Do you know your coworkers' hometowns? Their favorite colors? Their current level in Farmville? If you answered "yes" to all three questions, there may be a very serious management concern here.

The beauty of Agile software methods is that they enable us to focus with a singularity of purpose on the iteration management and project management aspects of the software delivery process. Numerous other aspects of software delivery, such as those illustrated in Figure 1, are, of course, of critical importance.

In a recent Advisor (see "Techniques for Requirements Management and Managing Stakeholders"), I discussed changes in requirements as they become more fluid and difficult to define and described some techniques

[From the Editor: This week's Cutter IT Advisor is from Cutter Senior Consultant Rebecca Herold's introduction to the August 2013 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "Privacy in the Internet of Thing

In May of this year, IBM's Watson computer system, famous for winning the TV game of Jeopardy, entered into the realm of customer engagement.

I have read a number of books recently as preparation for one that Piet Ribbers, Ron Blitstein, and I are completing. Here are three that have really gotten my attention:

With the popularity of "design thinking," companies are encouraging their designers to be in the field interacting with end users. Like any other new methodology or process adoption, design thinking requires a fair bit of change in the mindset of designers along with some new skills.

In this Advisor, I will briefly explain the design thinking process and detail its skills requirements. My intent is to help companies to be better prepared to embrace design thinking.

The standard design thinking cycle is shown in Figure 1.

Back in April, I discussed a mobile app undergoing trials with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) designed to provide foot-patrol officers with fast, easy access to information assembled from various separate databases when they attempt to investigate a building or question a pos

Real-time location systems (RTLS) combine software -- including location-finding algorithms and mapping programs -- and Wi-Fi-based active (i.e., "smart") RFID tags to provide users with immediate visibility into the location, condition, and status of assets, people, and workflows.

Over the years, the progression from transactional data as the basis for most management reporting and business intelligence activities has increased rapidly. Right now the industry is going through a major set of transitions, with the latest being explosion of Big Data initiatives.