Monthly Archives: September 2009

Is the Recession an IT Opportunity?

 Anne Mullaney | Sep 30, 2009  2 Responses
Sep 302009
 
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In a conversation earlier today with Keith Harrison-Broninski, Keith said something that was just too good not to share: Generally the IT world is starting to bounce back, it seems. Personally I feel that the recession is a welcome opportunity for IT. So much IT investment is done without real business benefit: Name-only BPMS installations for SOX compliance Endless maintenance of sprawling ERP systems that should be ripped and replaced with standardized services Poorly managed infrastructure projects that waste hundreds of millions Government-funded research that never leads to a product Software developers wasting 25% of their time due to poor understanding of fault fixing (I’ve proved and eliminated this on large-scale projects) Etc. One thing …

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 Business Technology Trends, Business-IT Strategies  Tagged with: , ,

Tiger Teams

 Jim Highsmith | Sep 30, 2009  2 Responses
Sep 302009
 
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Armies don’t fight as individuals, they fight as teams. In the U.S. Army, squads are grouped into platoons, then into companies, and then into battalions, regiments, divisions. If these multi-person squads are the basic building blocks in the military, then why is the basic unit of resource on most IT and software development projects the individual person? There are five individuals in an infantry squad. Three squads, plus a headquarters contingent make up an infantry platoon. As the size of the group increases, specialized groups are added, for example, a division could have a hospital, military police, signal, logistical support, and even a band. XP proponents advocate programming in pairs and agile methodologies in general …

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 Agile Project Management  Tagged with: ,

Making trash into treasure? IT’s role in reverse logistics

 Kim Leonard | Sep 25, 2009  No Responses
Sep 252009
 
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The Cutter Benchmark Review team is putting together an issue on IT’s Role in Reverse Logistics, and that means it’s survey time. The topic was new to me, so I went to the web for some education and inspiration. And bam! I found this great piece in Modern Materials Handling. In a nutshell, I learned that effectively dealing with returned materials offers companies the opportunity to bolster customer satisfaction, increase profit margins through resale (through channels like eBay or Craigslist), minimize inventory carrying costs and reduce their impact on the environment. The strategic use of IT resources can be the difference between success and failure in this endeavor. In fact, state-of-the-art technology and applying the …

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 Benchmarking+Surveys, General  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

The Rise of the Semantic Enterprise: September Cutter IT Journal

 Mitchell Ummel | Sep 25, 2009  No Responses
Sep 252009
 
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Nearly six months ago, the subject for this month’s Cutter IT Journal was conceived, and I was flattered to be invited to serve as the guest editor. Through the collective volunteer efforts (involving thousands of hours) by seven outstanding contributing authors, the set of cutting edge opinion, entitled “The Rise of the Semantic Enterprise”, has now been born. A few quick excerpts follow: “By exploiting the technologies of the Semantic Web, a semantic enterprise can create a people-machine continuum that enhances business agility”. “The emerging Semantic Web will require us to dramatically rethink traditional notions of how business, data/information, application, and technology architectures are conceptualized and realized within an enterprise.” “If CIOs are serious about …

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 Business Intelligence, Business Technology Trends, Web 2.0  Tagged with: , , ,

What color are your metrics?

 Anne Mullaney | Sep 17, 2009  1 Response
Sep 172009
 
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Last spring, when Gabe Piccoli, Rick Watson and Emily Ryan looked at whether green IT/IS was a priority for organizations, they found some good news: their survey for Cutter Benchmark Review uncovered that more than one-third of companies in the US, and over half of European companies had a long-term strategy in place for reducing their environmental footprints. Environmental responsibilities are increasingly becoming a mandatory part of business strategies. The pressure not only comes from growing customer demand for green products and processes, but it’s also coming from industry-specific government regulations that enforce precise collection, management, and reporting of carbon data. So now Gabe, this time along with Cutter Senior Consultant Bhuvan Unhelkar and Brian …

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 Benchmarking+Surveys, Business Technology Trends, Business-IT Strategies  Tagged with: , , ,

The Agile Triathlete

 Jim Highsmith | Sep 16, 2009  6 Responses
Sep 162009
 
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I was having coffee this morning with colleague Ken Collier and we were talking about Test-driven development (TDD) and the trials and tribulations of trying to implement TDD in a development environment. I left Ken and went out for a leisurely bike ride down from the Ponderosa pines in Flagstaff to the Scrub Oak and Juniper 1,500 feet lower and 15 miles out of town (then back up-ugh). As I was pedaling down hill thinking back on our discussion, it occurred to me that a developer doing TDD was like a triathlete–attempting to master three different, but integrated sports (running, cycling, swimming) (testing, coding, refactoring). There are several great analogies here. Many developers who are …

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 Agile Project Management  Tagged with: , , ,

Time After Time, After Time

 Jim Highsmith | Sep 15, 2009  No Responses
Sep 152009
 
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“Time after Time” goes the song by Cyndi Lauper. Time has been a pervasive theme in software development projects, and in fact, for all projects. But what time are we really talking about? What defines late? Is time the most important control measure? There are three distinctly different “time” perspectives: planned versus actual, elapsed time, and schedule performance. Each of these place a different perspective on “time.” So our song might be “time after time, after time.” The usual perspective on time comes from the emphasis on planned versus actual time. In general, making the plan is good — not making the plan is bad. Unfortunately, plans are more about politics than estimates in many …

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 Agile Project Management  Tagged with: , ,

Business Agility — Dynamism or Stasis

 Jim Highsmith | Sep 9, 2009  2 Responses
Sep 092009
 
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In thinking about business agility I’m drawn to Virginia Postel’s words. “How we feel about the evolving future tells us about who we are as individuals and as a civilization: Do we search for stasis — a regulated, engineering world? Or do we embrace dynamism, a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition? Do we crave predictability, or relish surprise?” (Postrel, Virginia. The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress. Touchstone, 1998). In today’s economic downturn many companies are waiting, waiting until the fuzzy future becomes less fuzzy. But, there is no way to predict what the economy, your industry, or your competition will look like in the next few …

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 Agile Project Management, Business-IT Strategies, IT Management  Tagged with: , ,

Toxic Leaders and Personal Simplicity

 Vince Kellen | Sep 5, 2009  1 Response
Sep 052009
 
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“I didn’t take this position for the money,” he said looking at me somewhat smugly and for a very brief moment perhaps too honestly. “I did it for the power.” I remember the conversation well. It was about 15 years ago. As a consultant then, I was, from time to time, in the offices of business leaders who I was lucky enough to do business with. Obviously this was a case of a young manager impressing me with his new-found power. I could see the glint in his eye as he relished the chance to exercise power. As I sat there, I began to wonder. Has he been telling everyone his motives behind the advancement? …

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 Business-IT Strategies, Collaboration+Teams, General, IT Management, Leadership  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Why It’s Important to Leverage IT Governance When the Chips Are Down … or Not.

 Christine Generali | Sep 3, 2009  No Responses
Sep 032009
 
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Senior Consultants Bob Benson and Tom Bugnitz are guest editors for an upcoming issue of Cutter IT Journal. Here is their Call for Papers, I hope you’ll consider submitting an article idea by September 10th. All organizations face difficult decisions in the current economic times like downsizing and cost containment. New technologies like the “cloud” force strategic decisions. Critical business and technical decisions have to be made for IT to contribute to organizational success and survival during the current downturn. At the same time, the economic situation makes resources much harder to find and justify. A risk is that current turbulence leads to blunt-instrument decision-making to deal with market and cost pressures. We believe organizations …

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 Business-IT Strategies, General, Governance, IT Management  Tagged with: , , ,
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