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IT Management

Insight into managing the IT organization.

Devops: A Software Revolution in the Making?

 Christine Generali | Apr 14, 2011  No Responses
Apr 142011
 
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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

 Agile Project Management, Collaboration+Teams, IT Management  Tagged with: , , , , ,

The Truth About Technology Management

 Stephen Andriole | Apr 5, 2011  1 Response
Apr 052011
 
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If you’re new to technology management, then much of what appears in this Advisor may strike you as opinionated, cynical, and arrogant. But if you’ve been at IT for a while now, you’ll see the contents as accumulated wisdom. This Advisor is for those who have been in the trenches for a long time as well as for those who want to jump right into the advanced course in gonzo technology management, skipping the pleasantries of undergraduate interning at your average consulting firm or within the discontented ranks of your typical struggling company. The assumption here is that the business technology relationship can be widened and deepened to yield significant business value. But there are land mines …

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

Upcoming IT Journal issue: The viral growth of Kanban in the Enterprise

 Masa K. Maeda | Feb 28, 2011  1 Response
Feb 282011
 
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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 …

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 Agile Project Management, Collaboration+Teams, IT Management  Tagged with: , , , ,

Ron Blitstein to Lead Cutter’s CIO Practice

 Anne Mullaney | Feb 10, 2011  1 Response
Feb 102011
 
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We’re thrilled to announce that Ron Blitstein has joined Cutter’s management team and is now Director of Cutter’s CIO practice. While this role is new for Ron, Ron is not new to Cutter! He’s been a Fellow of the Cutter Business Technology Council since 2007, and a Senior Consultant with our Business-IT Strategies practice. As Director of the CIO practice — which includes research, consulting, and training services around business-IT strategy and trends, enterprise risk management, security, sourcing, and innovation — Ron will lead the community of Senior Consultants focused in these areas and will lay out the research agenda in these domains. Ron’s 30-year career includes extensive international operations experience and spans all aspects …

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 Business Technology Trends, Business-IT Strategies, IT Management, Leadership, News  Tagged with: , , ,

Business Analysis as a Profession

 Bhuvan Unhelkar | Dec 8, 2010  No Responses
Dec 082010
 
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I foresee a major push, globally, for Business Analysis to be recognised as a profession. This is an absolutely vital trend that will continue to build due to shifts in the demographics of software development. As software development and maintenance becomes concentrated in some geographical areas and, as the Cloud and SaaS enable such software to be operated and maintained outside the business organization, there will be tremendous importance to formalizing the profession of Business Analysis. Currently, the term Business Analysis can imply anything from requirements modeling to systems analysis to business architecture. This vagueness will be replaced by a much clearer understanding of the business analyst role and related skill sets in business and …

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

The Cost, Value and Governance of IT and Shared Services 3.0

 Anne Mullaney | Oct 21, 2010  No Responses
Oct 212010
 
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Yesterday, I gave you a preview of Monday’s Summit 2010 program. Tuesday’s program is filled with just as many sparks! The first session is a case study. It will be led by Rogelio Oliva, who in addition to being a Cutter Senior Consultant, is Associate Professor of Information and Operation Management at the Mays Business School and previously, Assistant Professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at the Harvard Business School. So he really knows how to present a case! The case is on IT Cost and IT Value — a pretty important topic these days! First, everyone participating in the Summit will discuss the case in small breakout groups. Then we’ll all come …

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 Business Technology Trends, Business-IT Strategies, Conferences+Events, IT Management, Leadership  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

The Role of IT in Crisis Management

 Christine Generali | Oct 8, 2010  No Responses
Oct 082010
 
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With large global firms depending on suppliers and business partners in many locations around the world, it is pretty likely that all organizations will at some point be disrupted by some sort of crisis. And it is also pretty likely in this event that some aspect of IT will come into play — either as a source of or in response to the crisis. What is IT’s role in both crisis prevention and crisis mitigation? What kinds of tools, applications, strategies, and infrastructures work best to facilitate crisis response? The January 2011 Cutter IT Journal seeks to shed some light on this pressing issue. Proposals of interest are due 22 October. To respond, please visit …

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 IT Management, Risk Management  Tagged with:

Changing Playing Fields: The Impact of Crowdsourced Testing on Software Methods and IT Operations

 Israel Gat | Jul 28, 2010  1 Response
Jul 282010
 
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The Scrum v. Kanban debate has been relentlessly raging for the past eighteen months. One could only watch with fascination as polarized camps formed around what is after all a fairly dry software method issue. The intensity of emotions this debate generated could almost be compared with those expressed in the debate about abortions. As a practitioner who uses both methods, I tend to view them as arrows in my quiver. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. The important thing is suitability to the target environment, not the theoretical pros and cons. For example, one could prefer to use Scrum in development and Kanban in service delivery. A macro trend is starting to change …

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 Agile Project Management, Collaboration+Teams, IT Management  Tagged with: , , , ,

Identifying the Right Sourcing Strategy for Your Business

 Stephen Andriole | Jul 27, 2010  1 Response
Jul 272010
 
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The trends are clear. There will be more and more outsourcing as we proceed through the 21st century. On-demand, “pay-by-the-drink,” and related models will dominate technology delivery for the foreseeable future — and very likely permanently. Lack of expertise in the US is accelerating this trend. So where does this leave us? With a new requirement: vendor management. Vendor management is a broad area. Let’s explore the strategic highlights. First, you need a comprehensive sourcing strategy and inevitably a strategy driven by the results of a core competency assessment. (Yes, you have to do this again.) The essential questions here revolve around the core/noncore relationship between technology and your business models and processes. Put another …

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 Business Technology Trends, General, IT Management, Outsourcing  Tagged with: ,

Green IT Awareness Week: Are You Aware?

 Kim Leonard | May 28, 2010  1 Response
May 282010
 
Green IT Awareness Week: Are You Aware?

ComputersOFF.org has declared 1-7 June 2010 to be Green IT Awareness Week. This is a topic dear to our hearts at Cutter Consortium, and one that we examine frequently (See our Stats of the Week on a variety of Green IT questions, here, here, and here). Cutter supports International Green IT Awareness Week’s mission to “initiate, promote and support green IT discussions, emboldening employees with the knowledge and innovative ideas to reduce the environmental footprint of the organisation.” We’re taking action by stimulating discussion and awareness in a variety of ways — we hope you’ll join in too! Come back here, to The Cutter Blog to read — and debate — new, thought-provoking posts on …

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 Conferences+Events, General, IT Management, Leadership, News  Tagged with:
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