Big, Lean and BSM: Late Night Thoughts on the January 30 “Big Agile” Webinar

by Israel Gat, Practice Director, Agile Product & Project Management

Since we announced the forthcoming “Big Agile” webinar (click here for details), I have been exposed to numerous questions and comments about “Big” vis-a-vis “Lean” in the Agile context.  The intensity of some of these discourses was so high that I decided to comment on the subject in advance of the webinar. A lively debate during the webinar is, of course, goodness. In contrast, starting the webinar with a potentially gross misunderstanding as to where we are coming from and where we are heading is not too desirable.

In general, “big”, to me, can be “lean”. As a matter of fact, big should be lean as otherwise scale will quite possibly pose a problem.

Specifically, in the Agile context I expect “Big Agile” to incorporate various elements of Lean. For example:

Utilize Value Stream Mapping Measure Cycle Time Read more …

Update on Leadership Exec Ed

by Anne Mullaney, Vice President, Product Development and Marketing

Wow, I can’t believe that our Summit 2012: Executive Education+ is less than 3 months away! A while ago, I blogged a little about Prof. Amy Edmondson’s keynote on Teaming, which will be preceded by two teaming exercises run by Prof. Alan MacCormack. At the time, we hadn’t yet firmed up the case study portion of our program. But we have since then. We’ve chosen a case that bridges the topic of leadership (which is the focus of Prof. Richard Nolan’s keynote on Monday morning and the debate that follows it) and teaming. As with Alan’s exercises, we’re keeping the title of the case under wraps so there are no preconceived notions of the outcomes! I will tell you, though, that the case will be taught by its author, Prof. Michael Roberto.

Michael Roberto is the Read more …

Where Is IT Operations Within Devops?

by Bill Keyworth, Senior Consultant

It would seem that the devops discussion is mostly driven by development’s incentives, and appropriately so, given developers’ focus on building functionality for the business user. So it’s no surprise that development is the originator of the whole devops lifecycle, but are there any dangers lurking in a one-sided focus on devops issues?

A hefty majority of devops articles come from writers of the development persuasion who are motivated by the legitimate frustrations of the application deployment process. The movement to agile development has been a key contributor in the increase of handicaps encountered as a result of more frequent transitions from development to operations IT groups. Online and verbal discussions identify the primary challenge as getting IT operations to be more creative and flexible in their approach to changes coming from the application development discipline.{1}

Given its critical involvement Read more …

EA New Year’s Resolutions, Seventh Edition

by Mike Rosen, Director, Cutter Consortium Business & Enterprise Architecture Practice

Welcome to the seventh-anniversary edition of my enterprise architect’s New Year’s resolutions. I hope it will give you food for thought and some inspiration for architectural growth in 2012.

Understand business analytics. The past few years have seen dramatic increases in the capabilities of business intelligence systems, accompanied by decreases in costs, to the point where most organizations can easily afford to take advantage of business analytics. The problem is that the information that these systems need to analyze is not readily available. While this is not a trivial problem to solve, it does present a major opportunity for enterprise architecture. When we provide management or decision makers with information that they don’t currently have but that would help them make better decisions, it accomplishes several things. First, it sparks their interest in what architecture has to offer and, second, Read more …

Recession on the Horizon; Invest in Agile

by David Spann, Senior Consultant

Given the current interest rate situation and demand for US currency, the US will see much more business expansion through 2013. Once the world realizes we are not really any better off than Greece (in terms of debt/GDP), we’ll see inflation, business retraction and possible recession. Companies interested in surviving the 2013 – 2018 recession would be wise to invest in going Agile as soon as possible and holding the cash they save in the process to buy out those companies that weren’t so smart.

[Editor's Note: This post is part of the annual "Cutter Predicts ..." series, compiled at the Cutter Consortium website.]

Pads Will Rule the World — But Won’t Replace the Laptop

by Mike Sisco, Senior Consultant

If you don’t already have an Apple iPad or similar type of “pad”, odds are good you will soon. They are gaining in popularity at light speed, and CIOs are finding the need to integrate the use of pads into their corporate technology strategies.

I didn’t rush out to get an iPad when it was announced, but what I discovered was that those who started using them really liked them. Then, every major vendor started producing their own version of the pad. My wife and son now have iPads and I chose an HP TouchPad even though production has been discontinued. It serves my needs just fine for the time being.

There are reasons the pads will continue to grow in popularity within corporate environments:

Bigger screen makes it more practical to work on them Professionals are using them instead Read more …

Internet-based Mobile Technology will Play a Vital Role in 2012

by Alexandre Rodrigues, Senior Consultant

Last year, my prediction focused on the emerging impact of Internet-based mobile technology on the business models in the context of the economic and financial crises. I predicted:

The year of 2011 will most likely be characterized by further innovation and reliability of mobile technology allowing organizations to explore mobility on a much larger scale. Business models and processes are likely to be redesigned to embrace this potential.

The year of 2011 brought clarity about the real causes and trends of the so-called “economic crisis”: surprisingly (or not) globalization, as it consolidates, has triggered what I call a “beneficial leveling of wealth” around the globe. While this leads to “economic crisis” in certain parts of the world, especially in the northern hemisphere, in other parts of the world (especially in the southern hemisphere and Asia) it brought economic growth, Read more …

2012 Turbulence Means “Back to the Future”

by Bob Benson, Fellow

That there’s turbulence for 2012 that will affect business and IT isn’t much in question.  With great economic uncertainties (recession, Europe, elections) and, at the same time, significant changes in IT such as widespread user devices (tablets) and cloud, a lot is in flux. But what will this mean?

From everything we see at clients and in the press, this means a (perhaps uncomfortable) return to basics in IT. That is, we will see great emphasis by CIOs and CTOs on the things that have in the past been very important. This includes, for example:

Improving Operational Excellence Understanding IT’s costs and taking action to reduce them Successfully delivering IT value (and projects) Doing effective business-focused IT planning Assuring the availability of suitable talents in the IT organization (Re)building the relationship with business

In short, CIOs and CTOs will be Read more …

Systems Improvements for Government

by Mark Peterson, Senior Consultant

Numerous State, County and Municipal entities are facing difficult times managing finances and workforce cost. With the continued economic slump, government and its departments/business units are experiencing tighter budgets and are insisting upon greater value from investments. At the same time, financial and budgeting systems have aged to the point where it’s time to look at replacing them. While still useful, many existing business systems are lacking integration capabilities, hindering much-needed increases in workforce efficiency and effectiveness. New systems come with high expectations for improvement.

Financial ERP systems for State, County and Municipalities will be a major focus area for replacement and upgrades. While IT organizations have been prominent in developing project management offices (PMOs) over the last several years, IT leaders seem to have still not discovered how to gain the full support of the business. And with so Read more …

And the Winners of IT/Business Alignment are … those who can “Market” IT

by Bill Keyworth, Senior Consultant

The critical need for technology to achieve core business goals has never been more pronounced.  Business is rapidly advancing the use of technology to generate better profit margins, improved customer relationships and competitive advantage. As a result, the degree of change within IT organizations is unparalleled. Simultaneously, alternative “business” options for IT services now available outside corporate IT Operations are rapidly multiplying.

Cloud service providers such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are able to quickly resolve the business demands for faster IT provisioning, increased storage capacity, faster response time, and more flexible software business applications. Managed Service Providers can cost-effectively resolve or alleviate the resource handicaps of traditional, internal IT service organizations. But much of what IT does cannot be “handed off” to externally available services. Too often the most expensive parts of maintaining the IT infrastructure are the Read more …