If 2011 was the year of the “Social Enterprise”, then 2012 -2015 will be the years recognized for Crowd-Based Business (CBB).

The “Social Enterprise” is being touted as the next big thing… the new way to do business, a social way to do business. But the next “big thing” in collaboration is crowds, not social. Social is only a new method of connecting and discovering information, social does not enable and guide action. Business is about delivering results, and for that you need a crowd!

A crowd as “a network that drives an outcome, task or goal” has business value. Understanding how crowds can add value to your business and also ensuring your business does not get disintermediated (the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain) by a crowd-based business will be the biggest challenges your enterprise faces over the next Read more …

This month, Cutter unveiled its redefined BI practice, Data Integration, BI & Collaboration. I know it’s a mouthful, so let’s just call it “DBC” for short. As the new Practice Director, my aim is to shape this practice to best address your needs, but more importantly to continuously adapt as your needs change. I also suspect you are looking for Cutter to assist you in staying aware of emerging ideas and trends that might benefit your organization. Please consider this post an open invitation to join an ongoing dialogue that will help me shape this practice appropriately. I hope you’ll share your questions, ideas, and feedback to make this venture a success.

The practice name conveys the fact that traditional BI, the organization and reporting of corporate operational data, is no longer the competitive Read more …

The devops phenomenon is gaining traction in enterprises worldwide and its results have been turning heads in the business and user community. Bridging the gap between projects and operations, devops has the ability to deploy and manage business services in “real time.”

The July 2011 Cutter IT Journal, with Guest Editor Patrick Debois, will examine both the opportunities and challenges created by the devops movement. Proposals of interest are due 29 April 2011.

To respond, please visit http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers03.html

Crowdsourcing has emerged as a compelling alternative to the traditional processes that firms rely on to innovate and to create and capture value.

The June 2011 Cutter IT Journal will examine both the opportunities and challenges created by the crowdsourcing phenomenon, particularly in the context of IT and IT-intensive businesses. Proposals of interest are due 18 March 2011.

To respond, please visit http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers01.html

Kanban has become the hot topic of discussion amongst the IT community since 2010, due to its accelerated rate of adoption and remarkable impact on organizations — from the few-employee company to the tens-of-thousands-employee company — where it has been adopted despite its young age. This fast pace is both good and bad, Kanban is benefiting organizations when adopted properly, but there is a risk of doing it wrong by rushing an adoption without fully understanding it.

For example, people frequently ask if Kanban is a methodology for software development, or for software maintenance, or for project management, or a systematic approach to cultural change in the organization, or something else. Another frequent question is if Kanban is the next logical step after Scrum and if that means Scrum should be done before doing Kanban. Having a good understanding Read more …

The fast rise of software talent marketplaces like oDesk and uTest represents a profound transformation. Software is no more a world of places – Silicon Valley, Seattle, Bangalore, Krakow or Tel Aviv. Rather, software is fast becoming a world of work streams. These streams are tied together through social networking and collaborative techniques in which virtual team spaces replace the site, the conference room, the metaphorical shelf on which the software artifacts are stored… and the water cooler.

Three trends drive this transformation in software from a world of places to a world of streams:

Shortage of talent. Have you recently tried to hire highly skilled programmers in areas such as mobile applications or cloud computing? No matter where you site might be located, most of the skills you need in these critical domains are not within a Read more …

The following consultants have joined the Agile Practice over the past few weeks:

Jurgen Appelo Brent Barton Patrick Debois Hillel Glazer Sebastian Hassinger Chris Sterling

In addition, I am speaking this week with two other consultants who expressed interest in joining the practice. If they come aboard they will be adding very particular skills in specialties that are not fully represented yet in the practice.

Between the old hands, the six that have just joined and those that will soon be joining, the practice is nicely positioned to offer the whole spectrum of services relevant to producing software, delivering it and delivering value through it. Think of the practice as a one-stop-shopping for engineering practices, strategic consulting and anything in between.

Last year, I anticipated collaborative businesses to flourish rapidly. Airlines collaborating with hotels, which in turn would collaborate with car rentals, and they in turn with the insurance companies. The customer benefits through the enhanced experience of seamless service. There are two major movements/trends in this area:

Customer Collaboration. Customer collaboration is based on corporate customers who collaborate with one another in the process of buying/procuring products/services. Increasingly, through Web Services, customers are collaborating with each other as much as with vendors by forming electronic consortiums to procure wholesale goods, services, utilities, and so on. This will continue to lead to many-to-many electronic transactions resulting in a true oligopoly. Business Agility. Business agility is an important new trend that rides on the back of cloud computing. The Cloud enables a business to shift all its non-core IT functions outside its Read more …

The biggest shifts in the year ahead will be the additional integration of productivity software with social networking software, further blurring the line between work and non-work time. Organizations will try to leverage social networks as a means to extract more connectivity from staff, creating scenarios where connected staff members will be seen as contributors, even if their only contribution is mere presence.

I also believe some of the major productivity software packages will find ways to weave their informational web into these social networks, allowing for higher levels of information sharing among groups and subgroups. More and more organizations will create unique staff groups through LinkedIn and Facebook to generate “town hall” style communication, replacing classic organizational newsletters and staff updates.

Beyond that, 2011 bodes well for organizations willing to explore new modes and modalities in presenting goods and Read more …

Why limit myself to predicting what 2011 will bring? Here are some prognostications for the years and decades to come. Realistic? Far-fetched?

Over the next three years, as air travel becomes a greater security risk and more expensive, many companies will transition more of their business using social media, e-learning capability, and online communication tools like GoToMeeting. Tools like WordPress have just touched the tip of the iceberg. We will see more and more companies start using tools like this for Web sites and as a means to stay in touch with employees, customers, and prospects. In the distant future, we will no longer need cables to connect devices; not even for providing electricity for our devices. Passing electricity across a room to light a light bulb completely wirelessly is already being tested in a lab setting. The question I have is, “What happens Read more …