At around 16 pages, Executive Reports offer a deep, strategic look into a cutting edge issue, and serve as foundations to developing your own approaches. Short abstracts on the cover of each report help you immediately understand how the subject matter might impact your enterprise.

Outsourcing of Innovation

Brian Dooley
Abstract

The outsourcing of innovation is evolving rapidly as companies seek to decrease research costs and extend the discovery of new products and new ways of doing business into uncharted territory. The consumer electronics industry has been most heavily affected to date, but IT is likely to be next. This Executive Report by Brian J.


IT Hardware: The Free Ride Is Over

Lou Mazzucchelli, Cutter Business Technology Council, Cutter Business Technology Council, Cutter Business Technology Council
Domain

IT industry

Assertion 171:

The decades-old trend of computing and datacom hardware becoming "faster and cheaper" is about to change to just "faster." This change will affect how users approach IT budgeting, the way vendors approach hardware and software product lifecycle planning, and could ultimately spark a renaissance of software engineers who actually care about the efficiency of their code.


Lessons Learned: Taking a Page from Risk Management History

Carl Pritchard
Abstract

This Executive Report by Carl Pritchard uses lessons learned from three classic examples to get at the heart of risk perception and risk management.


Talking the Talk: What We Need to Tell the Uninitiated

Steve Andriole
Abstract

Communication is the essence of productivity. For decades, technology professionals treated the uninitiated -- the nontechnology executives and managers -- as though they were somehow inferior to the keepers of the digitalia.


SLA Metrics in the Context of an EA Program and Its Processes

Amit Maitra
Abstract

Service-level agreements (SLAs) represent formally negotiated contracts between two parties: the provider and the recipient. These are extremely important documents that provide a common understanding about the levels of availability, serviceability, performance, operations, or other attributes of a service such as billing and penalties.


The New Wireless Enterprise: Asset Tracking and Sensor Monitoring on an Existing Wireless Backbone

Louis Sirico, Dann Maurno
Abstract

Real-time location systems (RTLS) and wireless sensor networks (WSN) are now more practical and affordable, as they make use of existing wireless networks (such as 802.11) versus requiring proprietary networks. This Executive Report by Louis Sirico and Dann Anthony Maurno examines the state of the technology today, the practicalities of implementing wireless RTLS and WSN, and both the return on investment and cost of ownership of these technologies.


Unlearning and Learning in the Innovation Economy

Richard Nolan, Shannon Hessel, Robert Mason, Eric Clemons, Lee Devin, Erin Sullivan, Peter Hanke, Roberto Verganti, Alan MacCormack, Robert Austin

Cutter Fellow Rob Austin kicks off the discussion by asserting that firms must unlearn old principles and embrace new ones if they are to succeed in today's innovation economy. Cutter Innovation team members then contribute their views in an interactive exchange, rich in examples that range from Boeing's transformed view of "failure" to the role of "emergent features" in pharmaceutical industry innovation. They point out the value of a "no way back" strategy, the danger of being "best at what you do," the qualities essential in innovative leaders, and the creation of radical innovation through processes that are anything but "user-centered" improvements


Agile Adoption for Organizational Change: Improving Time to Market

Amr Elssamadisy
Abstract

This Executive Report by Amr Elssamadisy describes how to improve time to market by adopting different agile practices. For each agile practice, we offer a quick definition, contexts where it is applicable, a step-by-step adoption guide, and common missteps teams make in its adoption.


Lessons Learned: Taking a Page from Risk Management History

Carl Pritchard
Abstract

This Executive Report by Carl Pritchard uses lessons learned from three classic examples to get at the heart of risk perception and risk management.


Thinking Outside the Moat

Christine Davis, Cutter Business Technology Council, Cutter Business Technology Council, Cutter Business Technology Council
Domain

Organizational matters

Assertion 170:

There is a growing culture clash within the walls of the corporation caused by outdated and untenable rules as perceived by the Millennials, or Gen-Yers, and other techno-savvy employees.


Whistling Past the Graveyard on a Sunny Day

Ronald Blitstein, Tim Lister, Tim Lister, Tim Lister, Cutter Business Technology Council, Cutter Business Technology Council, Cutter Business Technology Council
Domain

IT strategy

Assertion 169:

IT professionals strive to work with business partners and engineer businesses for efficiency. It is unclear that the challenge of delivering a resilient organization has received sufficient attention.


Building a Craft-Based IT Organization: A Case Study

Vince Kellen
Abstract

Designing the right IT organization can make the difference between IT success and failure. Too often, the need to build traditional hierarchies to preserve power structures, placate business executives, or just keep the peace often prevents IT executives from designing optimal IT organizations.


Mobile Enterprise Architecture: Model and Application

Bhuvan Unhelkar
Abstract

Mobility in business implies two keywords: location independence and personalization. This Executive Report by Bhuvan Unhelkar discusses the mobile enterprise architecture (MEA), which synergizes the crucial aspects of mobility in an architectural framework.


Harnessing the Power of Virtual Worlds: Exploration, Innovation, and Transformation -- Part I

San Murugesan
More in this series Harnessing the Power of Virtual Worlds: Part I Part II

Business Technology Trends and Impacts: Council Assertions

Cutter Consortium, Cutter Consortium
Business Technology Trends & Impacts: Council Assertions

Established by Cutter Consortium to help spot emerging trends in IT, digital technology, and in the marketplace, the Cutter Business Technology Council's members are IT specialists whose ideas have become important building blocks of today's wide-band, digitally connected, global economy.


Moving the Herd: Facilitating Multiparty Project Teams Toward Common Goals

Moshe Cohen
Abstract

Getting a group of people to move together toward a common objective is never easy. As a project manager dealing with teams of people, each of whom represents different constituents, comes from a different point of view, and is trying to pursue a different set of interests, your task is formidable indeed.


Journey to the West: The Changing Face of China's IT Outsourcing Industry

Ning Su
Abstract

As China rapidly emerges as the new frontier of global IT offshoring, the country's IT outsourcing industry is undergoing a profound change: many vendors are strategically shifting their client bases from Japan and Korea to the US and Europe.


ITIL V3: It's About Business Value, Not Technology

John Berry
Abstract

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a best practices framework, and its most recent version introduces what can be described as strategic, operational, and technical process guidance with almost transformative power for organizations that adopt it. ITIL version 3 (ITIL V3) outlines how to achieve IT management process excellence by leveraging a lifecycle approach to service delivery.


Packaging Architecture for Reuse

Oliver Sims
Abstract

In industries other than IT, an architect's skills and experience are often packaged and reused across multiple projects without the architect necessarily being involved.


Developing Core Application Systems for the 21st Century

Ken Orr
Abstract

In this Executive Report, Ken Orr discusses the major sets of options currently available to business and IT planners today concerning their current legacy systems: leave them alone, replace them with COTS, replace them with open source applications and components, or replac


Enterprise Risk Management & Governance Executive Report Abstracts

Cutter Consortium, Cutter Consortium
Enterprise Risk Management & Governance Executive Report Abstracts 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 2011 | Volume 8 Corporate Cyb

Is Design Still Dead?

Ken Orr
Abstract

Agile development has moved beyond its niche movement and an increasing number of organizations are adopting agile development for more projects. But regardless of its success, there are still many skeptics regarding its application to very large and/or complex systems.


HDTV and the Office

Tom DeMarco, Cutter Business Technology Council, Cutter Business Technology Council, Cutter Business Technology Council
Domain

IT technology

Assertion 168:

Present advances in home media promise to be the tail that wags the dog of organizational computing.


Content Management in the Enterprise

Brian Dooley
Abstract

Content management represents a critical area of infrastructure for the enterprise. As content becomes digitized, managed, and accessible through portals, the advantages of bringing most if not all content under a single management scheme become more apparent.


Transitioning to Agile Project Management: A Roadmap for the Perplexed

Sanjiv Augustine, Arlen Bankston
Abstract

As agile project delivery methods have entered the mainstream, the burning managerial question has shifted from whether to adopt them to how. Switching to agile often brings swift and dramatic change, but ensuring that this transition is positive in nature requires an informed, pragmatic approach.