The Cutter Edge

In each biweekly edition the Cutter Edge, you'll discover information, insight and advice that sparks your imagination. From ruminations about future user interfaces to how and why you need to define a strategy statement; the importance and sensitivity of SOA governance to the problems with data/information in large organization, the Cutter Edge hits upon all the diverse issues puzzling today's enterprise. Register today to begin getting the Cutter Edge -- FREE. Like all of Cutter's research, the Cutter Edge is vendor-independent and packed with concrete advice from Cutter's expert Senior Consultants and journal authors -- practitioners who have first-hand experience with the challenges you face.

The Cutter Edge
31 January 2012

Welcome to The Cutter Edge. In each free edition you'll benefit from insight and business technology advice designed to help you further your organization's mission.

Featured Article

Commander's Intent and Corporate Guidance

by Carl Pritchard, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

A financial services client last month asked me if I had read anything about management and the relationship to "commander's intent." While I had to confess that I had not, I did some quick searching to find out what the concept was about and how it might relate to effective management practice. What I found was a compelling object lesson on how we should be drawing on the lessons learned from other practices.

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Popular Research

Knowledge Management for the Competent Enterprise

by Karl M. Wiig, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

Systematic and deliberate knowledge management (KM) of knowledge-related processes and intellectual capital (IC) assets is pursued by competent enterprises throughout the world. Its purpose is to facilitate enterprise actions to be highly effective by building, maintaining, making available, and safeguarding IC assets from operational, tactical, and strategic perspectives. New understandings of workers' cognitive processes and advances in computer sciences make KM increasingly powerful as it spans both people-centric and technological approaches. This Executive Report by Karl M. Wiig emphasizes what is important from new KM perspectives and reviews established approaches to provide a complete picture of KM's role in the competent enterprise.

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Stat of the Week

Q: Does your organization currently analyze unstructured data from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., to support its BI, marketing, and other efforts?

Stat of the Week

Curt Hall points to the conversational nature of social media content that makes it difficult to analyze. "Simply put, most end-user organizations do not have staff readily on hand who possess a strong understanding of social media analysis tools, which depending on their sophistication can include advanced algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) as well as other linguistical analysis techniques derived from AI and advanced statistics."

* Excerpted from "Corporate Use of Text Mining and Analysis: Part III -- Social Media Analysis Trends for BI and CRM" (Login Required), Data Insight & Social BI Executive Update, Vol. 11, No. 24.

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Editor's Pick

The Economy, the Cloud, and the iPad: Notes from a CIO Breakfast

Would you like to be a fly on the wall at an informal CIO breakfast meeting? In "The Economy, the Cloud, and the iPad: Notes from a CIO Breakfast" Cutter Senior Consultant Ken Rau dishes on some of the well-timed topics discussed by everyday CIOs at a recent get together.
-- Kara Letourneau

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New in Cutter IT Journal

Embedding Devops in the Enterprise

by Patrick Debois, Guest Editor

With the term "devops" picking up steam, vendors are now (re)branding their tools as devops tools. Similar to unit-test tools that supported an agile workflow, the current discussion on deployment automation supports the devops ideas. Even though tools have their merits, after reading the August 2011 issue of Cutter IT Journal -- "Devops: A Software Revolution in the Making" -- it should be clear that tools are merely one aspect of devops and must be complemented with other aspects. The nice thing about tools is that they give you something concrete to discuss, as compared to the more intangible notion of "culture." Within large enterprises, tools are probably the easy part. Therefore, in this issue, we would like to focus on the harder aspects, like "people and processes," or as the Agile Manifesto puts it, "Individuals and interactions."

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IN THIS ISSUE


Spotlight on Cutter Senior Consultant Patrick Debois

Learn about devops from one of the originators of the term! Patrick is an expert is bridging the gap between projects and operations by using Agile techniques in development, project management and system administration. Get to know him through the popular two-issue devops series he guest edited in Cutter IT Journal, and attend his "What Leaders Need to Know About Devops" session on April 4 at the Cutter Summit.


Join our live webinar tomorrow!

When a Business Plays Games: It Can Be a Good Thing, Too

Join Cutter Senior Consultant Bart Perkins for this webinar and find out how businesses, not-for-profits, and governments are starting to use video games to address a wide range of business challenges. Register now. Register now.


Cultivating Leadership Throughout the IT Organization

The success of an IT organization is directly affected by the kind of leader you are -- and the kind of leaders you develop. Get insight into the makings of an effective leader when you download your complimentary copy of this essential Cutter IT Journal issue now!


The Neuroscience of Leadership

In this Business Technology Trends Council Opinion, Cutter Fellow Lynne Ellyn asserts that with an advanced understanding of neuroscience, smart companies can develop software that capitalizes on the real nature of the brain, leading to greater usability, customer satisfaction, and improved human performance. This report includes contributions from Ron Blitstein, Israel Gat, Lou Mazzucchelli, Ken Orr, and Robert D. Scott. Order now. Clients access here.


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