Why R&D Sets Business Strategy

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

Why I stepped down as general chair for ICSA 2017

This week I stepped down as general chair for the 2017 International Conference on Software Architecture. It was a very difficult decision and not one frequently made by a general chair. So, what happened? It all started an honest misunderstanding on my part. When I was asked to act as general chair as the proposal … Read more

Leading through Disruption (or not)

One of the ongoing questions in my mind is why large companies have such a difficult time managing disruptions and, as a consequence, why the average tenure of companies on the Fortune 500 has now decreased to 10-12 years. My thinking around this question got triggered recently, when I received an email in response to … Read more

On Hierarchy, Micro-Management and Leadership in R&D

Over the last years, I periodically visited a company that I have really admired for a long time for their focus on autonomous agile teams. These teams have a lot of freedom within their area of responsibility and can choose virtually anything from the platforms to use, the tools to use, when to release, what … Read more