Jan Bosch
Most of the software-intensive systems companies that I work with are in the process of converting from pure product businesses to product + service or pure services businesses. This is a huge change for any company and means changes at several levels and all functions of the company. Over the last months, I have been … Read more
The vast majority of R&D leaders and especially consultants focus on the efficiency of R&D: how to convert requirements into software against the lowest possible cost and resource needs. Although anyone from agile and scrum experts to continuous integration professionals focus on this challenge, very few people focus on the effectiveness of R&D. Effectiveness refers … Read more
This week I spent in Buenos Aires (Argentina) at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2017), which is the premier event in the field. As usual, I enjoyed the pre-events such as workshops, smaller co-located conferences and panels more than the main conference itself. Although many will disagree with me, I feel that the … Read more
Software ecosystems and platform businesses are the new black and several of the companies that I work with are, in some form or another, working on more strategic engagements with their ecosystems. Although the ambition to position oneself as a keystone partner in a software ecosystems and to provide a platform for others in the … Read more
Everyone loves order. Order gives structure, predictability, safety and comfort. Our brains are wired to seek order, either by shaping the world around us to maximize it or by avoiding situations where we might lose it. There is nothing more comfortable than sitting smack in the middle of our comfort zone. For the entire history … Read more
Every week or so, I end up in a discussion about ecosystems, be it business ecosystems or software ecosystems. Interestingly, almost everyone I talk to takes a “descriptive” approach to their ecosystem of choice. They describe the ecosystem as a fact of life or a force of nature, like gravity, and often I get explained … Read more
This week I ran a workshop at a large well-known company applying the three layer product model (3LPM). The 3LPM is a conceptual approach to categorizing the functionality in your product, platform or portfolio. As the name suggests, the functionality in the system is put into three boxes, i.e. commodity, differentiating or innovative. The model … Read more
As Marc Andreessen so eloquently wrote in his Wall street Journal OpEd, software is eating the world. In virtually every industry, ranging from banking to retail and from mobile phones to self-driving cars, the companies that are winning are the ones who are best at software. Many, however, wonder what it means to be best, … Read more
Introduction to Ecosystems The transition from internally focused to ecosystem-centric ways of working brings with it many advantages. It allows for companies to focus on their core competencies, to outsource all activities that are not strategic for the company and to employ ecosystems of third party developers to complement the core functionality provided by the … Read more
