Industry Watch: What does ‘value’ mean to developers
It was around late 2017 when we first reported on ‘value stream management‘ as it pertained to software development. By now, everyone knows that value stream concepts were first introduced on manufacturing floors, and were designed to eliminate waste (of effort and materials) and wait times (dependence on others to complete tasks before you could … continue reading
Analyst Watch: 8 traits of an Agile superhero
Agile IT practitioners must exhibit a range of digital business skills that go beyond the ability to code, such as courage, communication and leadership. Application technical professionals who exhibit this diverse and important skill set are what we like to call “Agile superheroes.” Some superheroes, like Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and the Hulk, have superhuman … continue reading
Guest View: It’s getting too technical
Every business analyst has heard this at least once, if not often: “I don’t want to get too technical for this discussion.” But the fact of the matter is “it is getting technical.” With more organizations moving to the cloud and developing cloud-based solutions, terms of information technology that have been used in the software … continue reading
Industry Watch: COVID-19 has exposed lack of planning
Over the years, we’ve written a lot about disaster planning and recovery, the need for backing up systems and business continuity. While many large organizations have their data in redundant locations — either their own data centers or cloud-provided regions around the world, smaller organizations have looked at disaster recovery in the same way they … continue reading
Analyst Watch: Three smartphone trends worth watching
A few months ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the near-term future of the smartphone seemed obvious. We were moving to foldable devices with the only question being whether these devices would unfold to get to tablet size (Samsung) or fold down to fit better in your pocket (Samsung, Motorola). But with the collapse … continue reading
Guest View: Fact or fiction — Is service mesh really needed for microservices?
Service mesh is regularly pitched as the silver bullet for developing services, but in reality, it only addresses specific operations, security and traffic policies, not every possible aspect. As enterprises move away from monoliths to microservices and cloud-native applications, it’s vital to have secure and easy to implement integrations that free up developer time for … continue reading
Industry Watch: Home is… where I always am!
The novel coronavirus pandemic has forced many of us to change our routines. Perhaps the biggest of these changes is the fact that now, many of us are working from home for the first time. In the software industry, remote work — or telework, as it’s sometimes called — is fairly common. But in magazine … continue reading
Analyst Watch: 3 steps to becoming cloud native
What is a cloud-native enterprise and how does an enterprise achieve that designation? A cloud-native enterprise is one that specializes in cloud-native development, or development that is optimized for distributed infrastructures. Examples of distributed infrastructures include hybrid clouds — on-premises applications that use products and services from a multitude of sources and applications that leverage … continue reading
Industry Watch: Planning for the perfect
Estimating the time and cost it takes to deliver a project is the bane of system development and it is an old problem that doesn’t seem to be getting any better. How bad? According to a 2012 McKinsey-Oxford University study of 5,400 large- scale IT projects, 66 percent were over budget, 33 percent came in … continue reading
Analyst View: The climb to quantum supremacy
The story of Moore’s Law describes well how computing hardware has evolved and grown in performance over the life of modern computing and how in the current era the pace of that law has saturated. The switch from single to multi-core CPUs has helped keep the curve from going completely flat, but what is creating … continue reading
Industry Watch: How I came to love tech
Allow some self-indulgence as we celebrate 20 years. Growing up, I always wanted to be a sportscaster, having worshipped at the temple of the great Marv Albert (“kick SAVE and a beauty!). I went to the University of Maryland for journalism to begin the quest, and walked into the radio station, declaring, “I’m here to … continue reading
Analyst Watch: 5 steps to master continuous delivery
Melissa is a technical professional in charge of application development for a large manufacturing organization. In the past few months, she’s had to make some changes to promptly meet the demands of the customer and the business — including regularly updating applications with user feedback and responding to new shifts in the market and changes … continue reading
premium Guest View: The importance of healthy code for your business
Coding creates the backbone of most businesses today, whether it is developing an app for our smartphones or other software meant to ensure smooth technological processes. It is a way we can talk to machines using a logic base and make them do what we want them to do. However, one misplaced figure or apostrophe … continue reading
Analyst Watch: IT predictions, or parlor tricks?
I think it’s about time that we addressed the elephant in the room: predictions are a bit of a parlor trick! The problem is that we humans are horrible at predicting the future. There are several reasons for this, including challenges such as optimism bias, the curse of knowledge, and distinction bias. As analysts, we’re … continue reading
