“You can lead an organization through persuasion or formal edict. I have never found the arbitrary use of authority to control an organization either effective or, for that matter, personally interesting. If you cannot persuade your colleagues of the correctness of your decision, it is probably worthwhile to rethink your own.”

—Alan Greenspan, former chairman of […]

 
Since we started putting out the word on Cutter’s annual Summit before the program was 100% final, I’ve received several emails asking about what else is on tap. We’ve got a packed program already, and we’re still squeezing more in! Again this year, there’s nothing “theoretical” about any of the sessions at the Summit. […]

Israel Gat and Bob Furniss have joined Cutter’s team of expert Senior Consultants. Most recently, Israel Gat led the Agile transformation at BMC Software. Under his leadership, BMC software development increased Scrum users from zero to 1,000 in four years. [Michael Mah and Mike Lunt of BMC Software described this transformation in an Executive […]

According to Cutter’s Bob Benson and Tom Bugnitz, asset management is one of those concepts that the IT profession has made vague and less than understandable. In a recent Cutter Business-IT Strategies E-Mail Advisor they’ve set the record straight about asset management.

Asset management is about assets. These are things we buy or make. They have […]

The unraveling global economy and its effect on our companies and our lives is about the only thing on people’s minds these days.  So we asked the Cutter Business Technology Council Fellows for their advice to IT leaders about how to survive during this financial mess. Here are some snippets of what they advised.
Tom DeMarco: […]

With 2009 looming large, ugly and just around the corner, it’s time for the obligatory prognostications. Boy is this difficult… Hmmm. What will next year bring? Any wild guesses?
Rather than focus on the dark clouds, I am going to first look for the silver lining ahead.
Trend 1: Firms will try to remove […]

Is information technology accelerating the wild swings in the market?
Oil barrel prices, thought to cross over $200 are now around $50. The stock market jitters 5% - 7%  in a day looking like warmed-up jello. The talking heads on TV are talking with more emotion and I can see their veins popping on […]

For Abraham Lincoln, it was the telegraph. For John F. Kennedy it was the television. For Barak Obama, it is Web 2.0.
Each of these politicians proved adept at adapting new technologies to communicate. Lincoln took to the telegraph and used it for rapid communication. No doubt the advantages of the telegraph were on Lincoln’s mind […]

I had just gotten off the phone with a Merrill Lynch advisor who I know well. She surmised that maybe there is even more capitulation ahead. Maybe we will soon see the Dow at 8,000? Jokingly, I said I would start buying at 6,000. The fear, however, is real and the effect of […]

In this age of complex, entrenched IT infrastructure deployments, most organizations require a mapping between the business architecture and the IT architecture to meet business objectives. But is this a realistic goal? The December Cutter IT Journal will explore the challenges of business architecture/IT architecture alignment. We invite anyone who is interested to send us […]