The KIT ─ Knowledge & Information Technology
No. 108 - 15 November 2013
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In This Issue
Courses on KM and IT Innovation
Cutter Summit Highlights
Heard Recently
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Consulting Services
  • IT Strategy
  • Enterprise Architecture Roadmap 
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  • Enterprise Software Selection 
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  • Security Maturity
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Courses on KM and IT Innovation
The Network for Excellence in Training (NExT), the oil-and-gas industry training division of Schlumberger, has scheduled Claude's next courses as follows:
  • Knowledge Management (4 days), Calgary, April 7-10
  • Advances in IT (3 days), Houston, April 15-17
  • Knowledge Management (4 days), Houston, August 5-8

The Cutter Consortium is also scheduling Knowledge Management workshops, based on the same KM course, in Mexico City and Monterrey during the week of June 9-13.

For more information on the NExT courses, go to nexttraining.net. To inquire about the Mexico workshops, e-mail Adriana Galindo. 

Cutter Summit Highlight
The Cutter Consortium's Summit was held in Cambridge, Mass., on Nov. 4-6. While it did not attract the same crowds as the Red Sox had done the week before, it was still a memorable event. Below are some highlights.
   Well-known speaker and author Tom DeMarco said that companies are starting to hire IT talent again, and have trouble finding people with the right skills. They want to find people who already know the skills they need -- what happened to the notion of hiring people and training them?
   Robert Scott, now a business professor at U. of Michigan, ex-CIO of Procter & Gamble, gave a keynote on the CIO leadership skills that are needed in a "VUCA" world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous).
   Vince Kellen, CIO of the University of Kentucky, presented with his colleagues a case study on applying "big data analytics" in the world of higher education. Based on their work, the university is now able to provide students with valuable information, such as what courses are most consistent with their pursued degrees, how their grades are likely to be affected by certain choices, etc. Some of the data mining involved raises privacy issues, which were honestly discussed. On the technical side, the team discovered that SAP's HANA appliance, which manages large databases in memory (HANA means High-performance ANalytic Appliance) is very powerful for big data analytics... but that SAP doesn't know how to sell it.
   Twelve speakers took turns giving "lightning talks" of five minutes each. Claude Baudoin's was about "Security and the Internet of Things."
   Israel Gat's keynote was on "Agile in the API Economy." Exposing public APIs can create new markets for plug-ins and value-added applications. (Note that an upcoming issue of the Cutter Benchmark Review will analyze the adoption of API strategies, based on a survey of 150+ companies that are at various levels of adoption.)
   Lou Mazzucchelli looked into his crystal ball and told us how to "dig for gold in the emerging technology pile of hype."
   In addition, there were parallel roundtable sessions, and a final keynote by Tom DeMarco on ethics, a subject that is not often taught to IT professionals.
Heard Recently...

"We don't need more oversight, we need more insight."

-- Cutter Fellow Ken Orr, in a Cutter Summit roundtable

on Business and Enterprise Architecture, where the failure

of the Affordable Care Act enrollment Web site was discussed 

 

"Everyone who's been on a project like this that has failed is going to make sure he's never going to be on another one. So the next project will be staffed by rookies, not experts."

-- ditto