Jan Bosch
Both the proponents and questioning antagonists around artificial intelligence are expounding on the outrageous capabilities of modern AI solutions such as LLMs, foundation models and agentic AI. And yet, when interviewing key business leaders and observing the companies I work with, I must say that the adoption of AI is slow going and far from … Read more
With new breakthrough models being announced all the time and hundreds of billions invested, the hype around artificial intelligence seems to keep going much longer than any other major technology I’ve experienced in my lifetime. The promise (and to some extent the threat) of AI is that it will provide new levels of automation and … Read more
One of the facts of human cognition that never ceases to amaze me is that we seem to ignore more than 99.9 percent of all information that reaches us through our senses. Consciously, that is, as at least some of it is used by the unconscious parts of our brain. This means that our brain … Read more
Over the decades that I’ve worked with companies, I’ve seen many, many examples of sales versus engineering. These two functions are frequently at odds with each other for a variety of reasons. In companies that are mostly technology-driven, senior management often comes out of R&D and is frustrated with the sales organization being unable to … Read more
Few words get as much attention and excitement in the software-intensive systems industry as “platform.” One of the reasons is that it has several, quite distinct meanings that often are ignored or forgotten in the process. Everyone supports “the platform initiative” while failing to understand that we mean different things. In my view, there are … Read more
For the better part of well over a century, companies would classify themselves as product- or service-oriented. Product companies often were high-margin businesses with high volatility as the investment in product R&D was largely fixed, but the sales and margins were very much influenced by the competitive landscape, the economic climate and the capabilities of … Read more
Few words are as overused and misused in product companies as the word “innovation.” In most contexts, it means something along the lines of new and good. It’s new because we didn’t have it before we developed it and it’s good because it wouldn’t be innovation otherwise. Few people are interested in discussing innovation that … Read more
The distinction between development and operations has been identified as obsolete in many companies that have adopted continuous deployment. The term DevOps was coined to refer to teams that are responsible both for development and operations. Although DevOps sounds really easy in theory, it’s surprisingly multi-faceted in practice. Since software started to be included in … Read more
Once upon a time, the customers and users of the products we built were vague, amorphous beings. Although most in R&D suspected they were out there, they were no real, tangible personas. This led to many decisions being made based on technological capabilities and, sometimes, spurious ideas of what customers and users might appreciate. At … Read more
Most companies I work with are focused on R&D. As product development is viewed as the wellspring of all new products and, by extension, revenue, the function is often protected from external influences by putting gatekeepers in between the customer, suppliers and other ‘distractors’ and the folks in R&D. Generally, the thinking seems to be … Read more
