Jan Bosch
During another week on the road (Zurich, Paris and Stuttgart this time) and after discussions with dozens of people at the conferences and meetings, I noticed a pattern that repeats itself again and again in technology driven companies. For the latest major digitalization technologies, such as big data, IoT and deep learning, I have observed … Read more
Although there are still companies out there that are going through the agile transformation, most of the companies that I work with have adopted agile practices at least at the team level. Agile teams are more empowered and because of that, among others, more productive and more motivated. However, if we lift our focus up … 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
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
In almost every meeting that I have these days, the notion of organizational change comes up. Everyone is concerned with changing too slow and the risk of being disrupted by more agile and innovative competitors they haven’t even heard of. My role gives me the opportunity to talk to people at all levels in typical … Read more
This week was all about digitalization for me. I spent most days this week at three companies in different parts of Europe and spoke at the excellent Digitalization seminar at Chalmers (see here for my slides). Two of the companies that I worked with this week are traditional “metal bending” companies that are in the … Read more
The term “agile” has received vast amounts of attention and adoption in the software industry and the term is now used in business contexts as well. Everyone understands the notion of sprints, but I notice that many do not really think about or understand why speed is so important. Although there are many reasons why … Read more
After running my consulting business over the last years, I’ve started to see a pattern in the engagements with large companies. The engagement often starts with senior R&D management, one or more lead architects and perhaps a couple of experienced engineers. The focus is some major transformation, platform effort or other topic that starts off … Read more
This week I spent a few days at the OOP 2017 conference in Munich, Germany. Before, during and after my talk there (click here for the slides) the topic of innovation came up frequently. It seems like every company has its own garage, lab and open innovation initiative. They all have read the Lean Startup … 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
