Digital Transformations Fall Short, Survey Claims
What is the nature of digital transformation? Is it a permanent shift in the digitization of business processes, or a race to a known destination? Should organizational investments in data analytics, continuous software development, business processes, culture, machine learning and shifting enterprise technology from a perspective of ownership and control to consumption be judged from […]
DevOps at the Speed of Business: 5 Tips for Success
It’s an exciting time to be an engineer. With companies today moving faster than ever, engineering teams are developing and deploying new code daily, continuously improving and advancing the business. But while the pace of modern development creates new opportunities for engineering teams, it introduces new challenges as well—in particular, making sure new code releases […]
Digital Transformation Drives C-Suite Discord
In the sport of rowing, each crew member has to row in synchrony or the boat risks undesired turns and even potential tipping. It takes practice, communication and discipline for each crew member to raise their oar to the appropriate height and apply the appropriate power. Obviously, those crews who work best together are more […]
Low-Code Providers Continue Enhancing Their Development Platforms
Enterprise low-code development continues to grow in popularity as software vendors continue to unveil tool enhancements designed to help business users and non-developers build functional applications and business processes. The help from low-code platforms (and other platforms that are integrating low-code capabilities) couldn’t come at a better time, as enterprises continue to struggle to digitize […]
How to Rethink Sprint Retrospectives to Shape a Better Culture
If you have been in a scrum team (or even an agile software development team), you most certainly have had or heard about sprint retrospectives or gone through them. They often happen after the team showcases the work done during the sprint reviews or demos. The original intent behind retrospectives is to help the team […]
The Bumpy Rise of the Tech-Savvy CFO in Healthcare Organizations
The good news? The working relationship between technology leadership and financial officers in health systems organizations is improving. The bad news? Chasms between finance and IT remain, and they are common throughout health systems providers. Market Research firm Black Book Research recently found, in its “2019 Black Book CFO & Financial Leadership Survey,” that chief […]
Leading Business Transformation From the Top
From their inception, new agile digital disruptors have realized the importance of centering their business objectives around value and technology, making it vital for traditional incumbents to follow suit. If waterfall organizations ignore this challenge, their ability to innovate and react quickly to market changes and new customer demands is threatened. To change and succeed, […]
A Golden Age for Developers
There’s probably never been a time since the dawn of programming when there has been more opportunity for developers—individuals and teams—to imagine, create and be successful. Developers are able to do a lot more (and do things a lot faster) with more tools, a better development ecosystem and a tighter connection with the rest of […]
4 Traits of High-Performance Digital Leaders
Businesses that have retooled their culture, their hierarchy and their business mindset toward the use of technology are consistently outperforming their more traditional peers. According to the newly released Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey 2019, digital leaders are the top 30% of businesses that are extremely effective at leveraging digital capabilities to advance their business strategy. […]
IT Skills Challenge: Let’s Talk About the Elephant in the Hiring Room
There is a glaring skills challenge facing the UK tech industry. It is the perennial concern of business leaders, with the most recent research from the Cloud Industry Forum stating that 52% of UK tech companies lack IT skills in at least one area of their business. The findings, based on interviews with senior IT […]
CloudBees’ Acquisition of Rollout: The CEOs’ View
As Mike Vizard reported yesterday, CloudBees, as part of its mission to build “the world’s first end-to-end automated software delivery system,” announced another acquisition: Rollout, a developer of a feature flag application that allows for simplified testing of new modules within an application. Not to repeat the gist of Vizard’s article; you can read it […]
True Digital Adoption Empowers Humans
True Digital Adoption empowers humans to use use technology which is almost exclusively digital. What are the killer apps that you use all the time? OK, of those handful (for most of you) of apps, how well do you know them? What percentage of the feature set do you really use? Making better use of […]
Successful Digital Transformation Starts With Developers
Digital transformation (DX) continues to be a primary focus as companies both large and small look to become more agile, improve and accelerate the delivery of product and service offerings and enhance data-driven business decisions. The C-suite typically leans on IT departments and developers to champion such transformations, designing the software and tools that will […]
Getting the Enterprise Digital Core in Shape
While enterprises rush to transform their business digitally, most are taking tactical steps rather than building a comprehensive digital core that can be improved over time. Very few are taking a thorough view of their entire technology portfolio and looking for ways to create a cohesive core—their digital core—to provide them the strength and stability […]
Value Stream Optimization: Putting Business in the Driver’s Seat
How value stream can be a major driver of DevOps success in today’s software-only world Even as DevOps reaches a pinnacle in acceptance (as of 2018, only three percent of firms had not adopted DevOps and had no plans to do so), many organizations are still struggling to get high-quality software out the door. DevOps […]
Citizen Developers Drive Productivity and Innovation
It was once written that “software is eating the world,” “APIs are eating the world” and “APIs are eating software.” In 2019, a more accurate statement might be, “APIs (or application programming interfaces) fuel the software that’s still eating the world.” In today’s world, there is an ever-constant demand for software, enterprise applications and mobile […]
5 DevOps Terms That We All Use, Yet No One Can Define
I’m all for DevOps. Sometimes, however, I have a hard time talking about DevOps. The reason is because many of the key terms related to DevOps lack clear and precise definitions. Let me explain … DevOps is such a big deal that it has bred its very own lexicon. Search Google for “DevOps terms,” and […]
Get Testing Bottlenecks Out of Your Pipelines
I first learned the term “deployment pipeline” when I read “Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test and Deployment Automation,” by Jez Humble and David Farley back in 2009. End-to-end automation of the build, deploy, test and release processes kick in each time a team member commits a change to the source code repository. […]
Successful DevOps Initiatives Start With Company Culture
What initially drove the need for embarking on the DevOps journey in your team or at your company in the first place? Was it: Market shift? New leadership or an acquisition? New product or service idea? Cost savings or consolidation? All of the above? Whatever drove the need, my guess is there were pre-sales demos, […]
CTOs Should Embrace, Stick to a No-Meeting Day
You know the feeling: You open your calendar in the morning to find a completely booked day, back-to-back meetings and not even 15 minutes of time to complete any of the items on your to-do list. In fact, your day tomorrow and the day after look just as booked. An HBR study conducted last year […]
What Makes Product Managers Effective?
Product managers can specialize in all sorts of disciplines. Some are better at hardware development while others are better at staying on budget. However, there are a number of traits that are easily identifiable in great product managers regardless of specialty. Great product managers share great traits including confidence, compassion and curiosity. Here are the […]
Digital Transformation Vital for Business Survival
Businesses are in a fight for their survival, and they know it. Their direct competitors, large and small, are digitizing their businesses. And those businesses that effectively digitize first have much to gain competitively. However, as we’ve reported in “Digital Transformation: Coming from Behind” and other stories, many organizations are experiencing significant challenges when it […]
The State of Low-Code Development
As enterprises continue to play catch-up when it comes to meeting their internal demand for new software services and applications, more enterprises—but still, only a minority—are turning to low-code development platforms to try to fill the gap. Low-code development platform provider OutSystems released its sixth annual “State of Application Development Report.” The report is based […]