“I don’t hire older CIOs. I like them young.”
So barked an experienced and grizzled CEO in a conversation we had a decade ago. Why? Because they don’t know any better, he said. They overestimate their abilities, underestimate the problem, but work hard enough and are smart enough to pull it off.
I hope [...]

Over the last week we’ve received predictions from more Cutter Senior Consultants. Here’s a preview of the latest additions:

Rebecca Herold: Bigger privacy breaches than any that have occurred so far on social media sites will occur as a result of no information security or privacy pre-planning at many to most of these organizations.
James Odell: systems will [...]

The crystal ball gazing continues. Here are more excerpts from Cutter Senior Consultants’ predictions for 2010 and beyond.

Dave Rooney: Agile Software Development will follow the same pattern as two other game-changing trends — Relational Database Management Systems and Object-Oriented Programming over the upcoming decade.
Claude Baudoin: Expect contractors and consultants to be in demand, and many [...]

With the new year upon us, we asked Cutter’s Senior Consultants and Fellows for their business technology predictions. Their perspectives — as always — are quite thoughtful, thought-provoking, and varied. Projections cover the changing role of the CIO, what will happen in enterprise architecture, the increasing adoption of agile, the explosion of cloud computing, the [...]

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 [...]

“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 [...]

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 [...]

If agile methods are to achieve the position of strategic organizational capability rather than tactical engineering capability, then one of the key factors in achieving that position is changing the way we measure success. Many agile teams are now caught in a dilemma. On one hand they are told to be agile, flexible, and adaptable, [...]

One of the touted benefits of agile development is better early information on project problems and issues. This early detection enables management — project and otherwise — to take adaptive actions. However, early problem detection comes with its own problem — discomfort with early information. In waterfall projects management and staff are used to [...]

Agile Project Management, 2nd Edition, July 2009. by Jim Highsmith. Listen to a podcast interview with Israel Gat and Michael Cote later this week at http://theagileexecutive.com/. The new edition:

Focuses on fundamentals of Agile project management, plus a new emphasis on issues impacting enterprise agility.
Includes a new chapter Beyond Scope, Schedule, and Cost: Measuring Agile [...]