Monthly Archives: June 2011

 
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Many of the discussions I am exposed to as an agile consultant are about this question, “Have Agile methods crossed the chasm?” The client wants to know whether he or she will be using a software method that has reached a certain level of maturity and acceptance. Needless to say, the question is of critical importance. A client might be willing to be an early adopter, or even desire to be an early adopter, but he or she wants to be very clear up front about the maturity level of the software method to be adopted. As important as the question is, I will not try to debate it here, as beauty is often in …

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Cutter Consortium is pleased to announce that Hubert Smits and Ralph Hughes have joined our team as Senior Consultants. Hubert Smits is an innovative, assertive, and goal-oriented agile consultant, coach, and trainer who has successfully spearheaded enterprise-level agile-lean enablement efforts, including those at Oracle, Avaya, BMC Software, AOL, Fender, GE Energy, Amdocs, MySpace, and Compete. He specializes in working with large product development efforts in organizations that require organization-wide move to Agile practices. Israel Gat, Director of Cutter’s Agile practice, said “Hubert Smits is broadly acclaimed as the best Agile teacher/coach in the US. He possesses deep expertise and a ton of experience in large scale end-to-end Agile rollouts. We are extremely proud that he’s …

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For every vendor presentation claiming that cloud computing is an unprecedented revolution, there is an analyst paper denouncing the hyperbole. Every new example of IT goes through this phase, just as surely as a child goes through the “terrible twos” — and at about the same age. When a concept does not catch on, the providers and analyst firms have a ready solution: rename and restart. The move to “pay per view” use of externally hosted IT resources was given several other names over the past decade, and a new bout of fever erupted each time; two examples are “utility computing” coined by Sun and HP (2000) and “on-demand computing” by IBM (2002). No one …

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Congratulations to Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Ken Collier! His latest book, Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, was named one of the “11 Books to Recharge Your Leadership Skills” by CIO-Insight. A leading expert with Cutter’s Business Intelligence and Agile Product & Project Management practices, Ken is the developer of the Agile Business Intelligence (Agile BI) methodology, which combines agile methods with data warehousing, business intelligence, and advanced analytics. He has successfully adapted agile techniques to DW/BI to create the Agile Analytics style. He continues to refine these ideas as a technical lead and project manager on several agile DW/BI project teams. As CIO-Insight points out, Ken’s latest book is …

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Of the many challenges facings today’s CIO, perhaps none is more daunting or critical as the development of its IT personnel — especially in light of changing workforce demographics and evolving technology trends. It begs the question — “is the age of the ‘deep IT technologist’ behind us?” The September 2011 Cutter IT Journal, with Guest Editor Robert Scott, will examine both the opportunities and challenges in recruiting, retaining and developing the skills and competencies of the 21st Century IT staff. Proposals of interest are due 23 June 2011. To respond, please visit http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers02.html