Risk Management

Ideas and strategies to make risk management more effective.

More Predictions

Anne Mullaney | Dec 24, 2009 3 Responses

Dec 242009

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 of them will be ex-employees who, having found their past employer’s loyalty in short supply, will now be more interested in being their own boss than in rejoining as an employee. Ken Collier: Although Agile adoptions will proliferate, we will see an increase Agile project failures due to misunderstanding, misapplication, and misguided attempts to follow an “agile recipe”. …

Cutter Experts Predict Trends for 2010 and Beyond

Anne Mullaney | Dec 23, 2009 2 Responses

Dec 232009

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 impact of green initiatives, and more. We’re posting all the predictions on the Cutter website as they come in. Here are some excerpts: Israel Gat: I expect 2010 to be the first year of a prolonged golden age. San Murugesan: In 2010 and beyond, we will see growing interest and major developments in cloud computing, green IT, and mobile systems …

Big is Not Always Beautiful

Scott Stribrny | Nov 23, 2009 6 Responses

Nov 232009

Outsourcing big is not always beautiful. Indeed, sometimes outsourcing big can be a blunder. For example, on Friday, Information Age reported a tally of the UK government’s project management track record, and found that IT projects count among its worst failures. Why? “Government needs to stop thinking that when it comes to procuring IT systems, big is always beautiful,” says shadow chancellor George Osborne. “We need to move in the direction of what are known as ‘open standards’ – in effect, creating a common language for government IT,” he said, which would mean “big projects can be split into smaller elements, which can be delivered by different suppliers and then bolted together”. Even in Texas, big …

Business Technology Governance: Why the Pendulum Finally Stops Swinging

Stephen Andriole | Nov 17, 2009 4 Responses

Nov 172009

Pendulums swing back and forth in lots of areas. This is especially true in corporate and technology governance. But it may stop swinging for good very soon. Let’s look at why things are so different now — and likely to stay that way forever. THE OLD DEFINITION Let’s begin with a definition of technology governance. Wikipedia describes it as: … a subset discipline of Corporate Governance focused on information technology (IT) systems and their performance and risk management. The rising interest in IT governance is partly due to compliance initiatives, for instance Sarbanes-Oxley in the USA and Basel II in Europe, as well as the acknowledgment that IT projects can easily get out of control …

Will the Slightest Breeze Blow Your Architecture Down?

Lou Mazzucchelli | Aug 4, 2009 1 Response

Aug 042009

A primary function of IT architecture is managing change. This change happens at varying rates in and between levels of abstraction (think of wind moving at different speeds at different altitudes). So we can think of “horizontal” change — change in time within a particular level — as well as “vertical change” — the relationship between one level and another. A robust IT architecture maximizes the potential for improvements in all levels while minimizing the negative impact of change between levels. Sometimes IT architecture emerges through acquisition. In the old days, vendors imposed architecture that was bundled with their software development products. (Why would anyone have otherwise considered something like systems application architecture [SAA]?) As …

No More Gorilla Dust: Autopsy of GM

Robert Charette | Jun 10, 2009 4 Responses

Jun 102009

So long to the gorilla dust at GM. That’s what billionaire entrepreneur founder of EDS and ex-General Motors executive Ross Perot called the annual optimistic projections of GM executives during the 1980s, as it continued to lose market share. “When gorillas fight, they throw dust in the air to distract one another,” Perot said. Gorilla dust wasn’t just thrown only by Chairman and CEO Roger Smith throughout the 1980s, as GM’s US market share dropped from 46% to 36%, but also by his successors Robert Stempel and Jack Smith throughout the 1990s and Richard Wagoner into the 2000s as well. GM’s current US market share is under 18% — that was, before the bankruptcy announcement …

Reinventing McDonald’s, Again

Robert Charette | Feb 18, 2009 No Responses

Feb 182009

I am sitting here, sipping my free cup of coffee at McDonald’s, looking across the parking lot at the huge going-out-of-business banners strung across the entrance to my local Circuit City store. “I wonder,” I joke with the McDonald’s manager, who I know pretty well, “if they had to pay for those banners up front and in cash?” A couple of years ago, I wrote about Circuit City’s inability to manage its enterprise risks: I wouldn’t be surprised to see the company sold in a few years, or at the very least, its top management replaced. At the time I wrote that Circuit City had decided that it would replace its higher-paid employees with lower-paid …

Bob Charette on Here & Now

Anne Mullaney | Dec 2, 2008 No Responses

Dec 022008

Almost a month ago I told you about the cover story Bob Charette wrote for IEEE Spectrum on the problems in defense acquisition. Today, Robin Young of the NPR show Here & Now interviewed Bob about the article. You can listen to it here. The part with Bob begins about 5 minutes in, and lasts about 10 minutes.

Ineffective, Inefficient Acquisition Processes

Anne Mullaney | Nov 4, 2008 No Responses

Nov 042008

Cutter’s Bob Charette has written the cover story, “What’s Wrong With Weapons Acquisitions?,” for this month’s IEEE Spectrum. The article highlights the problems in defense acquisition: spiraling costs, extremely lengthy project delays, politics trumping technology, a lack of skilled workers, and a dearth of institutional knowledge as a result of outsourcing. Sound familiar? The scope of the projects and of the failures Bob reports is immense, but the issues are surely ones you can identify with, regardless of which industry you’re in or where you’re based. Bob interviewed dozens of industry and government defense-acquisition experts over the course of a year and a half to support this piece. When we talked about it, Bob remarked, …

Green IT and IS: Imperative or Impossible?

Kim Leonard | Jul 11, 2008 3 Responses

Jul 112008

Green IT and IS: Imperative or Impossible?

I’m curious. When IT leaders find themselves stretched as thin as can be now, how can putting yet another initiative on their plate — even one as important as IT’s contribution to sustainability — work? Cutter Benchmark Review Editor Gabe Piccoli made a strong case in his introduction to the recent green-IT focused issue of CBR: “So much is at stake when it comes to the viability of our planet, let alone our organizations, that it is our responsibility to make green IT and green IS a priority. But note that this focus on viability does not come simply at a cost. This is where sustainability shares important characteristics with the innovation and agility trends …

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Risk Management

Cutter Experts Predict Trends for 2010 and Beyond

Big is Not Always Beautiful

Business Technology Governance: Why the Pendulum Finally Stops Swinging

Will the Slightest Breeze Blow Your Architecture Down?

No More Gorilla Dust: Autopsy of GM

Reinventing McDonald’s, Again

Bob Charette on Here & Now

Ineffective, Inefficient Acquisition Processes

Green IT and IS: Imperative or Impossible?

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