Cutter Consortium, founded by Karen Fine Coburn in 1986 as Cutter Information Corp., is an American information technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 research

Research

Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

 company. In 1990, Cutter purchased the American Programmer

American Programmer

American Programmer is a high-end independent magazine for programmers and software technologists. The magazine was founded in the 1990s, and published by Edward Yourdon, inventor of the Yourdon Method of structured systems analysis and design methodology and the Coad/Yourdon Object-Oriented...

 journal (now called Cutter IT Journal), and partnered with its founder, Ed Yourdon, to form the Cutter Consortium. Cutter sold its environmental publications to Aspen Publishers in 2002.

Cutter's research is performed by expert practitioners in the field, who also bring their expertise to analyzing surveys of the current practices of business-IT professionals worldwide. Cutter research focuses on the areas of agile software development

Agile software development

Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams...

, enterprise architecture

Enterprise architecture

An enterprise architecture is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components , the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them...

, business intelligence

Business intelligence

Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....

, outsourcing

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...

, business-technology strategy

Technology strategy

A Technology strategy is a particular generation of an organization's overall objective, principles and tactics relating to the technologies that the organization uses. Such strategies primarily focus on the technologies themselves and in some cases the people who directly manage those technologies...

, risk management

Risk management

Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities...

 and benchmarking

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and/or best practices from other industries. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost...

.