Jan Bosch
In the software community, there’s a general belief that software ages, just like humans – David Parnas is famous for this quote (among many other things). Our findings don’t confirm this. We’ve studied architecture technical debt as well as other types of technical debt for a decade and we’ve generated all kinds of results. One … Read more
This week, I attended the International Conference on Software Business (ICSOB 2020) and gave a presentation on autonomously improving systems. The core idea is that software-intensive systems can measure their performance, know what to optimize for and can autonomously experiment with their own behavior. The history of software-intensive systems can be divided into three main … Read more
For all the human suffering and economic impact caused by corona, there’s one thing that has just surprised me over and over again these last weeks: companies and professionals just adjust and adjust quickly. Teams and departments that were stuck in old ways of working suddenly have found that it’s entirely possible to work in … Read more
With the vast majority of white-collar staff in companies currently working from home, the normal ways of managing people are disrupted quite fundamentally. Working closely with people in such a way that you can tell them what to do is much more difficult when you’re not physically in the same place. Similarly, many organizations rely … Read more
One of the well-known struggles of every company I work with is to combine innovation with efficiency-oriented operations. This is the classic problem of ambidexterity: the company needs to deliver on today’s revenue and margins while securing its future. The problem is not that companies aren’t aware of the challenge but that they lack the … Read more
As part of the research in Software Center, I work with dozens of companies in the software-intensive embedded systems space on a variety of topics. One of these topics is the development of new products. Having worked with online companies, as well as startups, I’ve become indoctrinated with Steve Blank’s ideas and the “lean startup” … Read more
This week, for the umpteenth time, I met a team in the process of putting a new product in the market, telling me that they were so customer centric. What they meant was that during development, they’d talked to a number of potential customers and some of the employees had used prototypes. For those that … Read more
The effects of digitalization and other technological shifts cause companies to realize they need to change. This often leads to significant discussions in the organization as there typically are several alternatives being considered by different people. These might include topics such as business models, product implications, partnerships with suppliers and technology providers. Agreeing on the … Read more
With data- and AI-driven development taking over the world, it may easily seem that the cloud is the place where everything happens. This is where the data is stored and analyzed, where the machine- and deep-learning models run and where all the value resides. The perspective of people living in this world is that all … Read more
Although everyone talks about digitalization (software, data and AI) and the risk of disruption that this brings to companies, very few talk about how companies get disrupted in practice. Most treat it as an amorphous force that topples companies over like a force of nature that is unavoidable and where we are the victims. Of … Read more
