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The IT professionals of today and tomorrow are center stage for all of critical changes in organizational, global, and workforce trends. But are they ready? More importantly, are IT organizations in general and CIOs in particular ready?

Much has been written about the role of the 21st-century CIO. In the face of these complex, interconnected trends, the CIO is responsible for ensuring operational excellence, aligning IT with the business, and leading initiatives that transform how the enterprise operates ... all while devoting more personal time to a new role as business strategist. CIOs are being judged by their ability to leverage information technology to drive business strategy and innovation for competitive advantage. However, it is equally important that the CIO lead the development of an IT staff with the skills and experience to deliver all of this.

This issue of Cutter IT Journal examines the tremendous challenges ahead for CIOs as they determining how value is to be manifested in their organizations.

Published: September 2011, 36 pages, PDF format
Authors: Guest Editor, Robert D. Scott, R Dhakshinamoorthy, Charlie Bess, Claudio Bartolini, Raja Bavani, Gabriel Capmany, Jose Pedro Pagano, Jorge V.A. Ronchese, and Vijaykumar N
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This report is also available as a PDF.

The report Adopting a Practical Social Media Strategy: An Enterprise Guide provides a common-sense approach to developing your organization's social media strategy. You'll explore the multiple uses and benefits of social media in a business context, the issues that hinder adoption, and how to maximize the benefit/risk ratio. Plus, you'll review the six mistakes organization's make when adopting social media.

The strategies provided in this report will help you:

• Use social media to improve your connection to customers
• Move beyond your fears of confidentiality breaches and productivity losses to develop a successful social media strategy
• Create a vision of what you want your enterprise to look like as a "corporate citizen of the Internet"
• Use social media for technology watch and competitive intelligence -- intelligence that is "hidden in plain sight"
• Leverage conversational marketing to remain closely engaged with your marketplace
• Gingerly handle issues of governance
• Utilize the new product development strategy of "release and listen"

What's more, you'll look at new tools that have emerged to facilitate social search, such as SlideShare, Aardvark, Hunch, and Quora. And you'll receive links to eight online social media compliance policies, including ones at IBM, BT, the Red Cross, and Coca-Cola.

Learn how to create a reasoned social media adoption plan. Order your copy of this report today!

Published: October 2011, 30 pages, delivered in print, by post

Authors: Steve Andriole, Claude Baudoin, Vincent Schiavone

The contrast between the beauty of the small and the requirements of the big generates systemic tension in many software projects, organizations, and companies. Resolving this conflict is the focus of this Cutter IT Journal issue, Big Agile, featuring insight from agile guru Israel Gat and his host of expert authors.

Table of Contents:

What Does It Mean to Be "Big"? The Agile Scaling Model by Scott Ambler. Explore eight scaling factors that individual teams will inevitably face in the course of doing Big Agile and why it is essential to use a disciplined approach that addresses the entire product delivery process to be successful.

Laying the Foundation for Big Agile Transformation by Dave Rooney. Find out how applying a complete rather than incremental approach to a product or system will bear continuous improvements -- starting by educating the team members, as well as the management, at all levels of the development and product management organizations.

To Be or Not to Be: That's the Leadership Question for Going "Big Agile" by David Spann. Based on a case study of the essential need for leadership in an agile transformation, you'll be provided with a blueprint for a large-scale agile rollout that you can apply to your own organization.

Big Anything Depends on the People: An Exploration of the Human Factor in Scaling Agile Methods by Tom Bragg. Explore the possibility that using a more "popular" software method such as agile attracts a more competitive and knowledgeable project team thereby increasing the chances of project success.

Big Agile Isn't "One Big Agile" by John Heintz. Examine some theories of management and technology -- encouraging learning and sharing across the organization -- that will make a big agile initiative much more likely to succeed.

Published: February 2012, 32 pages, PDF format

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This report is also available in a print edition.

The report Business Architecture: Creating Game-Changing Opportunities for Your Organization by William Ulrich provides a rapid roadmap approach for establishing and socializing business architecture and introduces a deployment technique that your business architecture teams can use as a template for getting started.

This report will help you:

• Communicate the benefits of business architecture in business terms
• Apply business-driven transformation strategies, roadmaps, and funding models
• Leverage value streams in business transformation
• Utilize business capabilities to create a shared vocabulary between business and IT
• Build a successful business architecture team
• Adopt practice-based approaches to delivering innovative and effective business solutions

You'll learn why business executives should embrace the concept of business architecture and discover how value streams and capabilities provide the baseline for crafting common semantics for articulating current challenges and a business vision.

BONUS: This report also includes two case study approaches to using value streams in planning and deploying priority business initiatives. The first focuses on using value streams for rapid situation analysis and resolution, and the second focuses on enhancing the customer experience.

Published: January 2012, 50 pages, PDF format

Author: William Ulrich

About Cutter IT Journal

Cutter IT Journal brings you frank, honest accounts of what it takes to improve IT performance. CITJ is unique in that it is written by IT professionals -- people like you who face the same challenges and are under the same pressures to get the job done.

Each monthly issue is devoted to a current IT topic -- not issues you were dealing with six months ago, or those that are so esoteric you might not ever need to learn from others' experiences. An expert Guest Editor delivers articles by established IT practitioners, including case studies, research findings, and experience-based opinion. No other journal brings together so many cutting-edge thinkers, and lets them speak so bluntly on critical issues.

As a subscriber, you will also receive between-issue Cutter IT Advisors -- email bulletins delivered straight to your inbox. Each edition offers expert advice on hot-button issues such as IT leadership, cloud computing, risk management, organizational change, adopting agile practices, and more -- in a concise, easy-to-read format.

Upcoming CITJ Issues

About Cutter Benchmark Review

When it comes to many of today's hot IT topics, the hype potential is significant. Cutter Benchmark Review helps you see beyond the hype.

In each quarterly report, editor Dr. Joseph Feller selects an IT topic of current concern and asks two of its foremost experts -- a distinguished academic and a practitioner in the field -- to frame the issue for you, explain how it relates to other trends, address the pressures and interests surrounding it, and provide a framework to help you make sense of the topic as it applies to your organization. These experts, often aided by the collection of fresh survey data, waste no time diving into solutions and offering real-world advice and recommendations you can immediately put into action at your company.

Upcoming CBR Issues

Subscriptions delivered outside of North America include a $100 shipping fee. Cutter IT Journal is published 12 times a year. Cutter Benchmark Review is published 4 times a year.

For details on digital subscriptions, contact us at sales@cutter.com or call +1 (781) 648-8700.

Table of Contents:

• Opening Statement by Patrick Debois
• Why Enterprises Must Adopt Devops to Enable Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and Joanne Molesky
• Devops at Advance Internet: How We Got in the Door by Eric Shamow
• The Business Case for Devops: A Five-Year Retrospective by Lawrence Fitzpatrick and Michael Dillon
• Next-Generation Process Integration: CMMI and ITIL Do Devops by Bill Phifer
• Devops: So You Say You Want a Revolution? by Dominica DeGrandis

Published: August 2011, 40 pages, PDF format

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The report Enterprise BI Architecture Groups: The Key to Effective Agile Data Warehousing Programs by Cutter's Ralph Hughes helps you create an environment where an enterprise data warehouse will naturally emerge from multiple agile data mart development projects. To do this, you'll learn how to evolve the commonplace architecture review board into an EBIA function that can align the deliverables of the agile development teams.

The guidelines in this report will help you:

• Improve the speed and quality of your projects
• Discover the challenges and benefits an EBIA group can offer agile teams
• Deliver your crucial BI applications more efficiently
• Forecast the services and productivity tools you'll need ahead of time
• Persuade your development teams to voluntarily align with corporate warehousing goals
• Gain insight into your organization's collective operations and competitiveness

You'll also be provided with a clear set of methodological patterns, design decisions, and prepopulated data components that an EBIA can offer your project architect that will shave months off prep work and the team's delivery.

And you'll get a suggested 120-day plan for implementing an EBIA function in the average organization as a starting vision for the work, milestones, and funding that an effective enterprise warehouse alignment program will require.

Order this report today!

Published: September 2011, 23 pages, PDF format

Author: Ralph Hughes

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The report Scaling Agile Technical Practices: Implementing Continuous Integration to Enable Lean by Jonathon Golden examines how the implementation of an enterprise continuous integration system and related organizational and cultural transformation truly enable organizations to apply lean manufacturing principles. The focus is on where the metaphor makes sense. The aim is to get past the fluff and focus on real-world lean software production practices.

Table of Contents:

• “Traditional” Integration
• Continuous Integration
• Continuous Integration Is Testing
• Source Control Management and Test-Driven Development
• Lean Metaphors and Continuous Integration
• Implementation Details
• A Final Metaphor
• Endnotes

Discover which software production practices are right for your organization. Order this report today!

Published: June 2011, 11 pages, PDF format

Author: Jonathon M. Golden

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

In the specific case of the IS strategy, not only is it already difficult to get clarity about the objectives (the elusive alignment quest), but the interdependence of people (and their varying attitudes and competencies), technologies (with the dizzying pace of their evolution), and existing organizational structures must all be thought about as part of the planning process. That's a lot to consider -- and constantly reconsider as conditions change. Strategic IT planning is hardly an emerging item on the executive's agenda. However, given its important and recurrent appearance on the CIO's top agenda items, it is the kind topic that we at Cutter Benchmark Review believe is important to revisit from time to time. More specifically, in this issue of CBR, we set out to examine the ways in which strategic IT planning influences the value that IT delivers to the organization, as well as the degree to which the planning process is perceived to affect organizational outcomes and results. With this focus, we can both benchmark the planning process itself and, at the same time, tackle the question of its relationship to IT value. Given the current and ongoing economic struggles facing businesses both large and small around the world, this seemed like an excellent time to discuss the value of strategic IT planning.

Published: April 2011, 31 pages, PDF format

Authors: Gabriele Piccoli, Editor; Dorothy Leidner, Bob Benson

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This report is also available in print format.

The report Strategies and Guidelines for Assessing and Improving IT leadership Skills provides you with expert insight into the characteristics, skills and behaviors that contribute to effective (and ineffectual) IT leadership, viable approaches to selecting and training IT leaders, and recommendations for motivating and empowering your project teams.

Some highlights from this report:

• Learn how to use a methodical approach to select and train IT leaders -- called leadership husbandry -- as well as a leadership model -- to help you motivate and influence your team members to achieve your business objectives.

• Gain insight from 11 UK-based CEOs on what traits were necessary for them to progress through the ranks of IT and beyond to the position of CEO.

• Explore a unique approach to leadership at DTE Energy -- adopting agile best practices as a style of organizational governance -- resulting in a culture of teamwork excellence as well as phenomenal business success.

• Examine the three key ways IT leaders can transform their mindset to develop a true partnership with the business and become an integral part of the leadership team.

• Get real-world confessions from a study of 250 IT executives in corporations worldwide revealing the reasons behind leadership failure, the attributes of effective leaders, why leadership matters, and the differences between leaders across industries and geography.

Improve your IT leadership skills with the timeless insight and recommendations found in this exciting resource. Order your copy today!

Published (Second Edition): January 2012, 85 pages, PDF format

Authors: Christopher Avery, Steven Baker, David Caruso, Robina Chatham, Kerry Gentry, and Richard Hordern

The report Strategy, Governance, and Execution Excellence: Best Practices for Leveraging Business and Technology by Patrick E. Moroney discusses how to use best practices to improve processes for maturing and communicating strategy, for choosing the right projects to invest in to execute that strategy, as well as for organizing, executing, and measuring project investments until return on invested capital can be put in the bank.

The report begins by looking at what is required of the modern business leader. It then details best practices in strategy, governance, and excellence execution, which are the foundational components we must master for the highest chance of success.

Table of Contents:

• The Role of the Modern Leader
• Calling All Real Business Leaders! Discover the Foundations You Need to Master
• Conclusion
• Endnotes
• Appendix: Governance Framework

Step up your game, your competencies, and the practices you employ to strategize the future, govern and make decisions about how to achieve that future, and execute to make sure it happens. Order your copy of this report today!

Published: August 2011, 17 pages, PDF format

Author: Patrick E. Moroney

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

This report by Dana Bredemeyer and Ruth Malan spells out the necessary qualities for great enterprise architects in the context of a historical story. It is the story of James Madison and the creation of the US Constitution. The story is told in narrative form, giving you the opportunity to discover its lessons for yourself as you shape how the architect's role is perceived in your organization.

The key characteristics for success that emerge from the Madison story and resonate with our experience with top architects around the world are:

• Domain expertise
• Political acuity
• Strategic ability
• Leadership skills

Having a clear, articulated strategy, and a way to move from that strategy to activities and decisions that align with it, will help you make a strategic difference in your organization. Order your copy of this report today and find out how!

Published: August 2004, 22 pages, PDF format

Authors: Dana Bredemeyer and Ruth Malan

Online resource center clients: Access this report online