SPEED, DATA AND ECOSYSTEMS
Excelling in a Software Driven World
Speed, Data, and Ecosystems – Excelling in a Software-Driven World by Jan Bosch from Jan Bosch on Vimeo.
“This book provides a a simple set of priorities and a clear roadmap to successfully transition your organization toward the “digitalization era”. I discuss the three focus areas that firms need to address: speed, data and ecosystems.
Speed is concerned with shortening the feedback loops between the company and its systems deployed in the field as well the users of these systems.
As virtually any software-intensive system these days is connected to the interned, we have unprecedented possibilities to collect data. This allows organizations to shift from opinion-based decision making to data-driven decision making and to generate novel insights.
Finally, ecosystems allow companies to focus their internal activities on the most differentiating aspects and to rely on partners in the ecosystem for everything else.”
SAVE 20% by entering Promo Code AZQ92 + FREE standard shipping!
Digital Transformation
A Holistic Perspective for Business Leaders
Digital technologies (software, data and artificial intelligence) represent the key disruptive force in industry in the 21st century. In response to this force, companies need to fundamentally transform and this affects the entire organization and the business ecosystem surrounding it. The transformation concerns – among other things – moving from a transactional, one dimensional business model to a continuous, multi-dimensional business model, from a focus on “atoms” to a focus on “bits” and from hierarchical organizational structures to empowered cross-disciplinary teams. Whereas many authors discuss a focused, single dimension of the digital transformation, the challenge is, in fact, holistic and multi-dimensional in nature as every function in the organization is affected and the company culture needs to transform. This book addresses the lack of a holistic perspective on digitalization by discussing it from ten different perspectives, including business strategy, leadership, innovation, personal development, R&D strategy, systems engineering, speed, data and AI, ecosystems and, finally, organization and change management. Through short sections, it provides a series of perspectives that, when combined, provide a holistic and consistent framework and context for your digital transformation. To order a paper copy (price €15 + shipping) or download a free PDF version: The Digital Transformation. For any questions or remarks, send email to jan@janbosch.com.
USING DATA TO BUILD BETTER PRODUCTS
A Hands-On Guide to Working with Data in R&D – The Basics
This book provides very practical guidance on how to use data to build better products. Hands-on startup case in wearables domain is used throughout the book to illustrate and exemplify the concepts presented. Download a free PDF version: Using Data To Build Better Products. For a paper copy, click on the button below. For any questions or remarks, send email to jan@janbosch.com.
Impactful Software
Business-driven Refactoring, Platforms and Ecosystems
This book provides set of tools to address the challenge of effectively and systematically reasoning about software assets, resource allocation, refactoring, platforms and engaging the ecosystem surrounding your organization. As the foundation for this set of tools we have developed the three layer product model (3LPM) as a tool and framework to reason about strategic use of software in large scale software engineering. To download a free PDF version: Double Your R&D Effectiveness. For a paper copy, click on the button below. In case of any questions or remarks, send email to jan@janbosch.com.
Strategic Digital Product Management
Engineering is concerned with building systems. We look at the requirements, design an architecture, do detailed design, implement, test and release. This may be a bespoke system for a specific customer, a product or a platform used to build other products with. There is another activity concerned with what to build in the first place. And, perhaps more importantly, why we should build the system in the first place. This activity is typically referred to as product management.
Defining the requirements for a system is the output of the product management activity, but a whole lot of work happens before that. This includes research to understand the market, interacting with customers, determining the way to release the system, what to charge for it, and so on. Because of these many facets, activities and responsibilities, product management is often viewed as fuzzy and difficult to understand.
In this short book, we’ll dive into the world of product management and seek to bring some structure to the topic and to identify the key activities, tools, mechanisms and approaches that are available to us, when to use these and to understand how product management has changed with the emergence of digitalization. In my view, one way of deconstructing product management is to discern five main areas: principles, scopes, activities, factors and roles. These are discussed in this short book. As always, if you have questions or remarks, please do reach out.
There is no such thing as: 15 mental traps
The very essence of humanity is our ability to create, use and believe in concepts, independent of these having a physical reality. For instance, the notion of a family or a tribe, the way we identify as members of a nation state or the way military units are molded into a team is entirely based on getting us to believe in a non-physical, artificial concept. At the extreme, people will sacrifice their lives for their unit, tribe or nation state. In the normal course of life, we use concepts all the time to communicate, solve problems and validate solutions. In fact, in many ways, innovation and research are concerned with the creation of new concepts.
Nothing this powerful comes without a backside and concepts are no different. Similar to a map being an approximation of a real-world area, abstracted to only show a highly limited number of aspects about that area, concepts abstract much more complex underlying structures and show only those aspects that are considered relevant when the concept was first developed. As we as humans ignore well over 99% of all information that reaches us through our senses, we use concepts to filter and quickly map what we are experiencing through our senses into the preconceived notions and concepts that we have internalized in the past.
The naive use of concepts without understanding the underlying more complex notion easily leads to mental traps where concepts lead us astray. The mental traps that I want to explore in this short book are concerned with mixing up the map with the real world. In information technology or software engineering, we use a whole lot of concepts and especially in a digital context, there is not really a real-world “map” to remind us that the concept is a model of reality and not reality itself.
Life Philosophy
These last years, I’ve written about companies and technology, but little about how to operate as a professional and change agent in a rapidly digitalizing world. The challenge is that it may easily become presumptuous and a bit arrogant, which is what I want to avoid as I’m as much a student as anyone reading this and just trying to figure it out as I go along. However, after having worked with quite a few companies, with hundreds, if not thousands, of people, and having observed and having been involved in successful and not-so-successful examples, I believe I have some credibility to share my reflections and thoughts on how to successfully lead and change companies as well as yourself. Here are 15 lessons I believe are worthwhile to consider.
Whitepapers
There are several whitepapers available for download:
- Software Platforms: In this whitepaper, I discuss 10 lessons that I have collected over the last 25 years working with platforms, software product lines and frameworks.
- Digitalization 8 Capabilities: Here I present 8 capabilities that companies need to master in order to be successful with their digitalization journey.
- Product Development Fallacies: Product development is plagued with numerous of misconceptions and fallacies. This whitepaper discusses the 10 most important fallacies and traps that I see companies fall into.
