Jan Bosch
One useful way to understand how companies develop and evolve their offerings is to look at what they fundamentally organize around. In my experience, most organizations fall into one of three broad categories: project-centric, product-centric or platform-centric. Project-centric companies organize everything as a project. Whether they’re developing a product, adapting it for a specific customer … Read more
The history of industry is littered with failed projects. Projects where a team was asked to build a product based on a specification, a budget and a timeline. And failed. According to the research I’ve conducted, 60-80 percent of all IT projects are considered failures in some sense, either because they failed completely or failed … Read more
Although there’s quite a bit of criticism of the new, young generations of millennials and Gen Zers, one aspect that I genuinely appreciate is their focus on purpose and meaning. As a Gen Xer, I grew up professionally in a time dominated by capitalism, globalization, efficiency and scale. Success was measured primarily in growth curves, … Read more
As we approach the end of 2025, it’s clear that the context in which software-intensive companies operate is shifting faster than ever. Over the year, working closely with businesses in domains such as automotive, telecom, industrial equipment and security, I’ve seen a growing divergence. Some organizations are accelerating, embracing data and AI to transform their … Read more
As I write this, I’m on my way home from a conference organized by the European automotive industry. Many will realize that this industry is having a very hard time right now. Low economic growth is causing people to not buy new cars. This is exacerbated by competition from the west and the east in … Read more
Over the last months, this series has explored the transition toward becoming an AI-driven company, with a particular focus on software-intensive systems industries such as automotive, industrial automation, telecommunications, energy and manufacturing equipment. These sectors face a unique constellation of challenges: long product lifecycles, safety-critical functions, complex supply chains, heterogeneous technology stacks and deeply embedded … Read more
When I started this series on the AI-driven company, we had developed three maturity models: AI in the company’s business process, the use of AI for the R&D process and AI in the product. Since then, however, we’ve developed a fourth model, which is concerned with AI in the business ecosystem that the company operates … Read more
In the final stage of the AI-enabled product maturity ladder, we cross a conceptual threshold. Instead of extending traditional products with AI capabilities, we design AI-first products. These are conceived around data and machine learning from the outset. Instead of being bolted on as an afterthought, AI is the core. AI-first products differ fundamentally from … Read more
Continuous ML is the fourth stage of our AI-enabled product maturity ladder. Here, models and systems don’t merely adapt occasionally; they improve continuously as new data becomes available. This represents a fundamental shift from periodic updates to ongoing evolution and systems that are learning and improving continuously. In order for this stage to be realized, … Read more
In the multi-ML stage on the AI maturity ladder for products, we move from individual to collective intelligence. Instead of relying on one model, we engineer systems composed of multiple machine learning models that work together to deliver complex functionality. As an example, a smart assistant system needs to integrate several ML models, such as … Read more
