Cutter Consortium News, Press, & Events

Designing a Dispute Resolution Program for Managing Conflict

30 Sep 2008 15:25:10 GMT

Zucker, William A. | E-Mail Advisors | 30 September 2008 | Cutter Edge

The best way to minimize risk is to nip conflict in the bud and to turn it to an organization's advantage.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080930.html

Ways to Soften Organizational Resistance to Alignment

23 Sep 2008 14:15:32 GMT

Berry, John | E-Mail Advisors | 23 September 2008 | Cutter Edge

With an almost evangelical fervor surrounding it, the steady flow of rhetoric concerning alignment of IT with the business side of the organization assumes that if the IT organization pushes for it, business units will enthusiastically embrace it. Often, this is not true, and IT managers must prepare for those occasions when the technology organization is truly ready to transform how it interacts with business units when everyone else isn't.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080923.html

The Strategic Orientation of the IT Shop

16 Sep 2008 13:49:51 GMT

Piccoli, Gabriele | E-Mail Advisors | 16 September 2008 | Cutter Edge

It is the norm today for the IT shop to be, or have the potential to be, a boundary-spanning function. Organizational theory has long recognized that within the firm there are areas whose focus is mostly internal (e.g., manufacturing and operations) and others whose role is to connect the organization to its outside environment, exchanging information and resources (e.g., R&D, marketing).

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080916.html

Keeping the Customer in the Product Loop

9 Sep 2008 14:04:15 GMT

Highsmith, Jim | E-Mail Advisors | 09 September 2008 | Cutter Edge

Customer collaboration is a cornerstone of agile development, but it is also one of the more difficult aspects of implementing agile. Of course, lack of customer involvement isn't unique to agile development -- software developers have had problems in this area ever since software entered organizational life. Agile developers insist on high levels of customer involvement, but they also assist in encouraging that involvement by delivering tangible, running software each iteration. Although the problems are similar with internal IT development and software product development, the involvement of customers is different enough that I'll separate the analysis.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080909.html

Choosing EA Means Choosing Change: Are You Ready?

2 Sep 2008 13:58:03 GMT

van Tyn, Jeroen | E-Mail Advisors | 02 September 2008 | Cutter Edge

Last summer (see "Nurturing the Hidden Architect," 6 June 2007), I wrote about the importance of avoiding a common problem with the establishment of EA programs: namely, that it disempowers some of the very people who understand and have been looking after the "important stuff" that an EA program seeks to address.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080902.html

Outsourcing: The Feasibility Analysis

26 Aug 2008 17:37:24 GMT

Funes Cervantes, Alfredo | E-Mail Advisors | 26 August 2008 | Cutter Edge

Beyond all doubt, the trend to outsource functions developed inside an enterprise or a government agency is at its peak. This phenomenon is not limited to IT; it's under consideration in several areas of an organization. Although outsourcing is a very appealing concept, it is essential for a company to be properly prepared for this kind of change.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080826.html

Investing in Enterprise Software

21 Aug 2008 22:19:15 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 19 August 2008 | Cutter Edge

Back in the 1980s, and even recently, some have claimed that investments in IT haven't paid off [1, 2]. Fortunately, much research in the past decade has started to explain the complex relationship between IT and advantage and has shown, rather compellingly, that investments in IT do matter [3]. Firms that invest heavily in IT and concurrently apply a set of appropriate management practices do reap rewards.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080819.html

Using Dynamic Visual Analysis to Support Business

12 Aug 2008 19:24:34 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 12 August 2008 | Cutter Edge

Advanced data visualization tools have been around for some time. They first gained a following among scientists and engineers, who used them to build models for fluid-flow analysis, aerodynamic simulation, and other complex applications involving large data sets with many cause-and-effect variables.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080812.html

Systematically Confusing Our Customers and Ourselves

5 Aug 2008 19:16:08 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 05 August 2008 | Cutter Edge

Users are not interested in programs. If they are, it is our fault. What users want is systems that produce needed outputs with the minimum of additional input and with the maximum of integration (or the ability to integrate) with other systems with which they share data.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080805.html

Making Small Victories with Guerrilla Management

29 Jul 2008 17:30:28 GMT

Pritchard, Carl | E-Mail Advisors | 29 July 2008 | Cutter Edge

In far too many organizations, bureaucracy is an inherent impediment to success. In a recent class, one student suggested that we might have to seriously consider "Guerrilla Project Management." I pondered the comment, laughed along with the class, and for several days have slowly come to the realization that in making small steps toward big practices, some organizations may be implementing the practice already.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080729.html

Organizational Capital: Making the Relationships Work

22 Jul 2008 17:30:01 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 22 July 2008 | Cutter Edge On the face of it, we all can agree that how a company does its work matters a great deal. The continual interest in reorganization, the business process reengineering explosion of the 1980s, and the now nearly universal acceptance of the business process and organizational structure as fundamental to good performance give proof to this truth.http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080722.html

Some Fundamental Assumptions About Agility

15 Jul 2008 15:32:20 GMT

Mazzucchelli, Lou; Lister, Tim | E-Mail Advisors | 15 July 2008 | Cutter Edge

We think of agile methods as a family of approaches aimed at dealing with uncertainty. If there is a high level of uncertainty about what exactly you will end up building, then the agile approaches (all of which call for multiple short iterations with ongoing customer feedback) make enormous sense. With the agile methods, we incrementally steer our way to a useful system. On the other hand, if there is a clear and explicit definition of what needs to be built, then the iterative approach significantly decreases in value, and a preplanned, classic, phased approach may be sensible.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080715.html

Collaboration May Be Key to Project Success

8 Jul 2008 15:21:44 GMT

Coleman, David | E-Mail Advisors | 08 July 2008 | Cutter Edge

In the IT world, most things happen in 10-year cycles. However, the evolution of project management (PM) seems to be on a 20-year cycle. The 1960s and 1970s used a consolidated mainframe approach to project management. The 1980s and 1990s saw a more distributed, desktop-oriented PC approach. Today, in the new millennium, we return to the consolidated approach -- but with a difference. The difference is that each time we go through the cycle we seem to add a layer of abstraction, getting closer and closer to the end user. In the current iteration, we have returned to software "in the cloud."

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080708.html

Geospatial Architectures: Don't Be Wiped Off the Map

1 Jul 2008 15:12:13 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 01 July 2008 | Cutter Edge

I really love maps. I'm something of a map freak. When I was a kid, my folks got me an encyclopedia that had a volume called "Places and People," and I spent whole summers browsing the maps and pictures, trying to get the relationships of those maps and the rest of the globe clear in my mind. As an adult, I've had the luxury of traveling all over the world on business and pleasure, and everywhere I've gone, I have bought maps and saved them for future reference. And as my kids grew up, they too sought out exotic (and usually dangerous) places. One daughter, who is a missionary, has spent most of her adult life in places like Bangladesh and Malaysia. Another, who used to be in the military, was in the Far East and then the Mideast, and a third had the habit of going to dangerous places like Belgrade during and just before the crisis de jour.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080701.html

The Complex Shape of Outsourcing in Latin America

24 Jun 2008 17:26:17 GMT

Funes Cervantes, Alfredo | E-Mail Advisors | 24 June 2008 | Cutter Edge

I frequently read articles about outsourcing, benefits, risks, business value, challenges, best practices, concerns, and so on. I wonder whether this information, most of it around success stories, refers to a reality exclusive to American companies, or whether we have the same environment in Latin America.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080624.html

Best Practices Must Start at the Top

17 Jun 2008 15:47:22 GMT

Cockburn, Alistair | E-Mail Advisors | 17 June 2008 | Cutter Edge

"Many project managers (PMs) still find the complexity of planning and delivering projects in a constantly changing environment often requires competencies that their formal training has not equipped them with," notes guest editor Rob Thomsett, in the May 2008 issue of Cutter IT Journal's call for papers. "Organizations struggle to deliver projects within agreed expectations."

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080617.html

In Web 2.0 Business Performance Management Initiatives, Wikis and Social Networks Top Survey

10 Jun 2008 14:55:46 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 10 June 2008 | Cutter Edge

The most popular Web 2.0 technologies used by organizations to support their business performance management initiatives are wikis and social networks. This finding comes from a January 2008 Cutter Consortium survey of 101 end-user organizations worldwide, which was designed to measure the extent that organizations are implementing business performance management technologies and techniques.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080610.html

A Culture Clash of Technologies: It's Time to Rethink Your Policies

3 Jun 2008 14:24:02 GMT

Davis, Christine | E-Mail Advisors | 03 June 2008 | Cutter Edge

Every company needs to establish policies to provide the necessary governance for legal, financial, security, and basic operational reasons. For the most part, employees do their best to follow these rules, or they try to work through "the system" to change them if necessary. Yet today, technology seems to be working against the system and management by creating more and more instances where employees either desire or need to violate the rules.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080603.html

Reputation Management

27 May 2008 14:30:06 GMT

Charette, Robert N. | E-Mail Advisors | 27 May 2008 | Cutter Edge

American businessman Warren Buffet once said that "it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080527.html

Why Are We Here? Three Words Help Answer

20 May 2008 14:19:58 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J. | E-Mail Advisors | 20 May 2008 | Cutter Edge

Technologists love technology and assume that others share this affinity. Unfortunately, most nontechnology executives and managers feel quite differently about technology. Most of them see it as a means to an end, and we all know what the end looks like. Therefore, we also know that there are key messages in which we should frame our discussions about the business value of technology. So how might you position an executive technology briefing? You could start by saying that you are here today to do the following:

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080520.html

Go Ahead, Raise the Scaffolding -- Temporary Can Be Good

13 May 2008 19:48:41 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 13 May 2008 | Cutter Edge

The things you have to be careful about in architecture are those everybody knows but are not true. I was working recently with a friend trying to sketch out a migration plan for an organization whose IT systems were not too great. In the course of that discussion, he remarked that "we don't want to put anything in place that we're going to have to get rid of later." Since later in this case was a couple or three years later, I had to think hard and fast about what he was saying. As it turned out, I think that he was wrong.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080513.html

A Realistic Business Perspective on the BI/DW Decision

6 May 2008 19:11:09 GMT

Benson, Robert J. | E-Mail Advisors | 06 May 2008 | Cutter Edge

My objective in this article is to look at the discussion of BI with or without DW from a business rather than a technical or operational perspective. As we know, it is all too easy to let technical issues become the primary basis for IT decisions, and this isn''t necessarily the only important perspective -- not least because it can bias the decision process from the perspective of business management ("Oh boy, there go the technocrats again!"). Frankly speaking, issues of "data management" and "data asset management" are, in the minds of many business executives, fundamentally technical matters.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080506.html

Agile Software Development: A Customer-Centric Way of Doing Business

1 May 2008 15:03:35 GMT

Berlow, Stacey | Executive Updates | 01 May 2008 | Agile Project Management

Agile software development promises to build -- in a faster way -- quality software that closely meets the customer's needs. Hence, the methodology is a customer-centric way of doing business rather than simply a process to be followed. As such, agile software development requires a strong partnership with the customer, one that affects every decision in a project's lifecycle.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/updates/2008/apmu0809.html

Qualities of a Great Project Manager

15 Apr 2008 15:02:26 GMT

Bauer, Martin | Executive Updates | 15 April 2008 | Agile Project Management

For those who have worked on numerous projects, it doesn't take long to tell when a project is being managed well or poorly. But what in particular makes one project manager better than another? What is it about those project managers that make a project work as smoothly as possible, but with other project managers, everything is a struggle? There's not one specific quality that makes a great project manager but a collection of qualities that needs to be balanced to meet the needs of each project. There's no specific order to these qualities; all play an important role. This Executive Update explores these qualities.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/updates/2008/apmu0808.html

"The Big Splash": Discovering How Wet Our Leadership Behaviors Can Be

1 Apr 2008 15:01:44 GMT

Spann, David | Executive Updates | 01 April 2008 | Agile Project Management

This Executive Update is a bit of a departure from our usual writings as it instead illustrates an important lesson by presenting a story, which is compiled from my many experiences helping leaders make meaningful changes within individuals, teams, and their organizations.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/updates/2008/apmu0807.html

Improving BPM with Object Solutions

29 Apr 2008 22:18:23 GMT

Tibbetts, John | E-Mail Advisors | 29 April 2008 | Cutter Edge

Business process management (BPM), also called business process modeling, is a hot topic these days: as a standalone solution; as the impetus for the customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) categories; and perhaps most importantly, as a critical enabling technology for the orchestration function in service-oriented architecture (SOA).

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080429.html

Why You Need Enterprise Architecture with Your ERP

22 Apr 2008 21:57:19 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 22 April 2008 | Cutter Edge

I've been working with many companies lately whose IT systems are dominated by enterprise resource planning (ERP). This is not surprising, since an ERP system is an essential part of most IT portfolios today. In many organizations, the ERP system contributes as much as 70% of the total IT capability. So one question that many companies are struggling with is: why is it still important to have enterprise architecture (EA)? Didn't you buy an architecture with the ERP?

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080422.html

New Survey: Enterprise Innovation 2008

18 Apr 2008 15:40:23 GMT

Respond to our survey on Enterprise Innovation 2008 and receive a free copy of "The Psychology and Motivation of Creativity and Innovation."

Toward Collaboration: Dispelling the Common Myths of Governance

15 Apr 2008 18:02:39 GMT

Ulrich, William M. | E-Mail Advisors | 15 April 2008 | Cutter Edge

Entrenched political infrastructures will not fall in line easily around the idea of tackling the governance issue. To the contrary, business units and IT spend most of their time working around the concept of governance because no one believes that it can change. This fact is clearly visible in most organizations.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080415.html

New Workshop: Practical Software Estimation

17 Apr 2008 17:58:17 GMT

Mah, Michael | Training/Workshops | Cutter Benchmark Review

In a survey conducted by Cutter Consortium of more than 100 software development organizations of varied sizes, the most common method of software estimation was -- "gut feel". Software engineers pick a number for cost and schedule estimates based on rough judgment of experienced developers nearly 50% of the time, and as a result this workshop was designed to teach attendees how they can help get software development projects in their company back on track by being able to produce better and more accurate estimates.

http://www.cutter.com/workshops/practicalsoftwareestimation.html

New Workshop: How to Collect and Use Metrics in Agile Software Development Environments

17 Apr 2008 17:56:14 GMT

Mah, Michael | Training/Workshops | Cutter Benchmark Review

In this workshop you'll learn how to move from a project whiteboard to create project trendlines on productivity, time-to-market, and defects using your own data. Get an inside look at agile measurement by seeing this in action using real case studies. Learn how to replicate these techniques to make your own comparisons on time, cost, and quality. And discover how to leverage these methods to make the case for change with your management teams at your company.

http://www.cutter.com/workshops/metrics.html

New Workshop Added: Agile Management

17 Apr 2008 16:53:14 GMT

Spann, David | Training/Workshops | Agile Project Management
|
This 3-day Agile Management course is designed for teams that will be working together on a project/initiative and that want to increase customer satisfaction, technical quality, and business value. To that end, the team will work collaboratively, through periods of instruction/learning, and then immediately apply the lessons learned using their project/initiative's actual data. For example, during the business case section of the course, the team will define its project's objectives, business value and elevator speech to assure everyone understands and agrees with why it is important.

http://www.cutter.com/workshops/agilemanagement.html

Scaffolding -- Building Things to Throw Away

9 Apr 2008 15:27:12 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 09 April 2008 | Enterprise Architecture

The things you have to be careful about in architecture are those everybody knows but are not true. I was working recently with a friend trying to sketch out a migration plan for an organization whose IT systems were not too great. In the course of that discussion, he remarked that "we don't want to put anything in place that we're going to have to get rid of later." Since later in this case was a couple or three years later, I had to think hard and fast about what he was saying. As it turned out, I think that he was wrong.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2008/ea080409.html

Rapid Feedback Propels Agile Development

8 Apr 2008 15:24:10 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 08 April 2008 | Cutter Edge

As agile development gains further currency, it is in danger of becoming watered down. Agile development in the hands of traditional project managers is likely to become neither agile nor development. As this happens, it is particularly important for the best and brightest in this business to distill what the best features of agile development are. As I say, "You can fake everything but testing."

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080408.html

Software Engineering Is an Oxymoron

1 Apr 2008 16:58:02 GMT

Ferronato, Pierfranco | E-Mail Advisors | 01 April 2008 | Cutter Edge

I recall a conference presentation titled "Software engineering? An Oxymoron?" that I attended about five years ago. The speaker was pushing the idea that the software development practice had to borrow concepts from the engineering domain, where the formal approach in design and build was a common practice consolidated over 2,000 years. The title was so-named to make the audience realize that software projects fail because of the actual way of realizing software, which is not aligned with the formal classical engineering practice. The point was that we ought to be more strict and formal. This idea, even if very interesting, is not sufficiently analyzed: there are other key points in this comparison.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080401.html

To Negotiate Outsourcing Contracts, Preparation Is Key

25 Mar 2008 20:34:26 GMT

Cullen, Sara | E-Mail Advisors | 25 March 2008 | Cutter Edge

So much emphasis has been placed on negotiation in outsourcing contracts that an inexperienced person could believe it is the pinnacle of the outsourcing lifecycle and involves the greatest amount of work and the greatest risk of signing a bad contract. If it does become the pinnacle, then something has gone seriously wrong in an earlier stage.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080325.html

Resonance Marketing in the Age of the Truly Informed Customer

18 Mar 2008 20:18:08 GMT

Clemons, Eric K. | E-Mail Advisors | 18 March 2008 | Cutter Edge

As Tony Paoni of Diamond Consulting likes to remind his listeners, the new networked economy is not just the old industrial economy with a mess of wires hanging off it. Even mass-produced consumer products like detergent, bread, and soft drinks, or traditional consumer durables like automobiles, are changing. Design, production, sales, distribution, and service are all being altered by the information flows in our networked world.

ttp://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080318.html

To Ban or Not to Ban: Social Networks Stir Workplace Issues

11 Mar 2008 20:17:14 GMT

Murugesan, San | E-Mail Advisors | 11 March 2008 | Cutter Edge

To ban or not to ban social networks at workplaces is an ongoing dilemma facing many CIOs, IT directors, and senior executives in numerous organizations. Despite the growing popularity and potential benefits that can be gained by embracing social networks for business applications, more companies are blocking access to social-networking sites. Currently, a third of employers in the US are restricting access to social-networking sites, according to security firm ScanSafe.1 About 32% of ScanSafe''s customers block access to social networks, with MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn the networks that are blocked the most.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080311.html

AI: Thinking Outside the Box

4 Mar 2008 15:24:53 GMT

Ellyn, Lynne | E-Mail Advisors | 04 March 2008 | Cutter Edge

Artificial intelligence (my definition): AI is technology based on the study of human cognition and problem-solving capabilities. Examples of such human cognitive skills include speech recognition, decision making, visual recognition, problem solving, deductive and inductive reasoning, and signal processing. Some of the technologies that came into being from AI research include multitasking/processing computers, robotics, object orientation, expert systems, rules engines, neural networks, fuzzy logic, fractal databases, and pattern matching.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080304.html

Global Process Optimization

6 Mar 2008 15:26:22 GMT

Coldewey, Jens | E-Mail Advisors | 26 February 2008 | Cutter Edge

Watching flight attendants doing service on a short-distance flight, you can learn a good lesson about global process optimization. There is just enough space in the aisle for a single trolley; overtaking is impossible. In most cases, the first attendant starts his service in row one and then services the rows consecutively. As soon as the purser has finished her post-takeoff checks and has prepared her trolley, she closes up to her colleague, who in turn skips a few rows the purser now services.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080226.html

Promote Teamwork over Politics

19 Feb 2008 15:27:25 GMT

Ambler, Scott W. | E-Mail Advisors | 19 February 2008 | Cutter Edge

Giving advice about the importance of teamwork is right up there with talking about the virtues of mom and apple pie. Yet, considering that 66% of development teams choose to work around their corporate data groups, clearly this isn't happening. It's no good having the best architecture in the world if the development teams aren't interested in it. Furthermore, an IBM study that looked into customer relationship management (CRM) projects showed that the primary success factors were business-oriented and cultural in nature and not technical [1]. We need to get the people issues right and, in particular, address the challenges around the cultural impedance mismatch if we're to have a chance at data architecture.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080219.html

Following the Microsteps a Customer Takes

12 Feb 2008 19:10:43 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 12 February 2008 | Cutter Edge

The connection between IT investments and success with the customers who pay the firm money is often indirect, ambiguous, and difficult to establish. For example, IT initiatives designed to share customer information to aid sales and marketing decisions might not have any impact on firm sales due to a variety of factors, including unpredictable external market events, internal business process issues, poor teamwork, misaligned goals and incentives, and so on.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080212.html

Politics in IT Governance and Prioritization

5 Feb 2008 20:03:32 GMT

Benson, Robert J.; Bugnitz, Tom | E-Mail Advisors | 05 February 2008 | Cutter Edge

Ah, the word "politics" sounds ugly. Yet IT managers always talk about the negative role of politics in making IT investment and prioritization decisions. It would seem that "politics" is something to be avoided, that somehow a more rational decision-making approach could avoid politics.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080205.html

Envisioning the Many Levels of Architectural Enlightenment

29 Jan 2008 19:36:41 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 29 January 2008 | Cutter Edge Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | 29 January 2008 | Cutter Edge

When I teach architecture courses, one of the things that I try to convey to the class is the different levels of complexity/interconnectedness/theory that exist within architecture. It is not the goal of the course to make people experts at metamodels, but it is important for an architect to understand that architecture is founded on architecture of its own. I was recently discussing this with a fellow architect, who also happens to be a Buddhist and who compared this to the different levels of awareness -- or enlightenment -- for which a Buddhist strives. I wouldn''t try to compare architecture to a system of spiritual belief, but there is something about the increasing levels of awareness that an organization and individual architects reach as they conduct their journey.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080129.html

Embracing Metrics: Accurate Cost and Schedule Estimation

22 Jan 2008 16:10:51 GMT

Mah, Michael C. | E-Mail Advisors | 22 January 2008 | Cutter Edge

Many IT managers are seeking to reliably forecast and estimate projects.

In these instances, a typical scenario involves a client organization (i.e., the marketing department or an internal business unit) that specifies a set of business requirements, user requests, or the like. Oftentimes, the level of specificity of the requirements varies tremendously, anywhere from a set of e-mails or memoranda to a complete product or requirements specification. In either case, and everywhere in between, the development manager must provide "the estimate" for budget and staff purposes. In perhaps 95% of the cases, the deadline is mandated by decree.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080122.html

Cybersecurity in 2008: Year of Pecking by Dangerous Ducks?

15 Jan 2008 13:33:47 GMT

Seiden, Mark | E-Mail Advisors | 15 January 2008 | Cutter Edge

In the last year or two, I''ve become very interested in cyberflexing. Because I'm a member of a National Academy of Sciences study (in progress) on the subject of "Ethical and Political Implications of Offensive Information Operations," I must mention that what I'm saying here are personal opinions on many of the issues and not conclusions of the study group.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080115.html

The Costs of a Customer Data Breach

8 Jan 2008 14:45:24 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 08 January 2008 | Cutter Edge

Because customer data breaches continue to make headlines almost every week, it seems appropriate to ask how much of a financial hit an organization should expect to take should it suffer such an incident.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080108.html

Project Prioritization: The Fourth Factor

2 Jan 2008 19:56:57 GMT

Rau, Kenneth | E-Mail Advisors | 02 January 2008 | Cutter Edge

Faced with more opportunities for the use of technology than there are resources available for their simultaneous development, organizations are faced with the task of prioritizing or ranking opportunities. Often organizations use a single ranking factor, such as ROI (return on investment). Where the ultimate goal is organizational consensus, it is advisable to use multiple factors or criteria to do the ranking so different scenarios can be presented. Management can then consider these alternatives, apply judgment, and reach consensus. Scenarios can involve combining multiple factors, considering them one at a time, or weighting certain factors more heavily than others given their relative importance to the organization.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2008/edge080102.html

BI: The Road Ahead

26 Dec 2007 19:52:32 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 26 December 2007 | Cutter Edge

Of all the areas in which technologists can make strong contributions, business intelligence (BI) is at the top of my list. After all, BI solutions touch people who make decisions. They are a primary means, a sensory organ, by which the firm comes to know its environments, both internal and external. The visual presentation layer of the tool interacts with human thought. BI solutions lie at the tangled nexus where technology meets both human culture and human cognition and in a very important area -- strategic planning and decision making. BI solutions are at ground zero in the competitive warfare around us.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071226.html

Why XP Matters to You, Now More Than Ever

18 Dec 2007 17:01:12 GMT

DeMarco, Tom | E-Mail Advisors | 18 December 2007 | Cutter Edge

From 2000 to 2002, there was an intriguing and active debate about the relative merits of Extreme Programming (XP and its agile ilk) and the approaches advocated by the process movement, particularly the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM). Today that debate has gone largely silent. It's not that the issue is less interesting than it was. What has happened in the interim is that globalization, and the move to offshore development, has taken a huge toll on the process movement's supporters. By mid-2002, for example, the membership of many SPIN chapters was more than 50% unemployed. Your best recipe to get laid off in 2002 was to be a process specialist. Your best recipe to still be unemployed today is to still be a process specialist.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071218.html

Organizational Culture: An Overview

11 Dec 2007 19:43:50 GMT

Thomsett, Rob | E-Mail Advisors | 11 December 2007 | Cutter Edge

There are hundreds of books and a countless number of articles on the nature of corporate or organizational culture. However, there is general agreement that corporate culture is about "how things happen in this organization" and the underlying shared views about what are acceptable ways of behaving, feeling, thinking, and communicating. What most observers of organizational culture agree on is that it is a combination of the interaction among three key elements. These elements are:

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071211.html

The Role of the Business Architect

4 Dec 2007 16:10:02 GMT

Ulrich, William | E-Mail Advisors | 04 December 2007 | Cutter Edge

As business architecture initiatives continue to take hold, executives are seeking to clarify the role of the business architect. It is important to understand the diversity of roles within core and virtual business architecture teams. Defining these roles will help ensure the successful deployment of business architecture initiatives.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071204.html

Embracing Metrics

27 Nov 2007 15:57:43 GMT

Mah, Michael C. | E-Mail Advisors | 27 November 2007 | Cutter Edge

Today, we have new knowledge about software measurement. Because it's an emerging discipline, we know more about it today than ever before. The emergence of the Internet and Web-based development has had significant impact. During the Y2K transition, additional patterns arose. A major economic downturn, agile methods, and application development and management outsourcing brought other dynamics. Today, software measurement operates in a new context, and its purposes should be reframed accordingly. Times have changed; so should measurement.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071127.html

To Multisource or Not to Multisource

20 Nov 2007 14:48:55 GMT

Berry, John | E-Mail Advisors | 20 November 2007 | Cutter Edge

To multisource or not to multisource? This is a question that will grow in importance as the size of sourcing and the varieties of processes sourced marches upward. In true, two-handed fashion -- on the one hand, on the other hand -- let's consider multisourcing's value first, then some of its risks.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071120.html

The Data Steward: Bridging Business and IT

13 Oct 2007 19:32:05 GMT

Moss, Larissa T. | E-Mail Advisors | 13 November 2007 | Cutter Edge

The data steward role is not a business role in the "take customer orders" or "prepare invoices" sense. It is clearly a role that bleeds over into what was traditionally the IT space. IT and business must come together, and the data steward is one of many roles that will help accomplish that. At first glance, the following tasks look as though they would be IT prerogatives, but they are in fact essential business responsibilities:

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071113.html

IT As Goldilocks

6 Nov 2007 13:58:37 GMT

Blitstein, Ron | E-Mail Advisors | 06 November 2007 | Cutter Edge

First I must share a bias. To be effective, IT departments must be no more than half a step ahead of the business partners it supports. If IT has the temerity to be more than this elusive half step, it will be accused of arrogance and be seen as disconnected or following its own agenda. If IT is seen to be lagging the business, the fate is equally unpalatable. IT is now seen as an impediment to business strategies and ambitions -- a boat anchor, a blocker. Sadly, given project lead times, if IT only moves in lockstep with its business partners, it will be too slow to deliver and be a drag on critical business timelines. The key to success is the "not too hot and not too cold" alignment that requires value-creating IT departments to discover that tricky half step. Alignment is key, but is it enough?

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071106.html

Setting Up a Full-Service Risk Practice

30 Oct 2007 19:47:53 GMT

Pritchard, Carl | E-Mail Advisors | 30 October 2007 | Cutter Edge

The implications of "full service" are not limited or limiting. They open the door for interpretation and for inclusiveness.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071030.html

Upcoming Webinars

30 Oct 2007 19:46:11 GMT

Don't miss Cutter's upcoming webinars -- exclusively for Cutter clients, at no additional charge.

15 November 2007
Compared to What? A Look at Application Development Benchmarks led by Michael Mah
13 December 2007
Transitioning to Agile Project Management: Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water led by Sanjiv Augustine

The Origins of the Human Capital Concept

23 Oct 2007 20:03:31 GMT

Berry, John | E-Mail Advisors | 23 October 2007 | Cutter Edge

The business community concluded at some point that the words "employees," "workforce," and "personnel" were inadequate in describing workers' influence in shaping enterprise success. So a phrase was introduced into the lexicon of business and industry that more appropriately acknowledges the newfound importance of labor: "human capital."

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071023.html

New Survey: IT Trends for 2008

17 Oct 2007 21:56:31 GMT

Respond to our survey on IT Trends for 2008 and receive a free copy of "Trends for 2007: Looking Back to Look Ahead."

The State of BI

16 Oct 2007 18:29:06 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 16 October 2007 | Cutter Edge

For me, the most telling and important statistic in Cutter's recent survey on the state of BI is the percentage of employees that use BI tools: 57% of respondents indicate 0%-9.99% and 70% indicate 0%-14.99% (see Cutter Benchmark Report, "Successful Business Intelligence: Moving Beyond the Obvious," Vol. 7, No. 9). This confirms what I have long since observed -- most employees do not use business intelligence tools. Experience has also shown me that of those that do use BI tools, most use the more mundane features of the tools.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071016.html

Potential for Agility

9 Oct 2007 21:03:50 GMT

Robertson, Suzanne | E-Mail Advisors | 09 October 2007 | Cutter Edge

An agile requirements strategy is one where there is no wasted effort. All the effort you spend on requirements (meeting, interviewing, modeling, reviewing, prototyping, documenting, testing -- everything) brings you closer to being able to meet your project's goals. But not all projects have the same potential for agility. Large numbers of stakeholders, scattered development teams, varying levels of experience, and other factors that make it difficult to get answers and make decisions all influence your potential for agility. To help make your requirements strategy as agile as it can possibly be it is useful to consider the agility potential for your project.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2007/edge071009.html