Jan Bosch
Over the last months (actually, more like years), we’ve studied the digital transformation of several companies in the Software Center. Professor Helena Holmström Olsson and I developed a model to illustrate how they actually transition from their legacy business rooted in atoms to a digital business based on bits (see the figure). It has four … Read more
This week, I had an interesting discussion about data with the CEO of one of the startups I work with. The challenge is that many companies are collecting vast amounts of data, storing it and then leaving it as an unused asset. It surprises me that so many companies are maintaining such amazingly large data … Read more
Imagine the following scenario. A (sizable) team at a large company writes customer documents in response to customer requests. They request help from the automation team to reduce their repetitive tasks. The automation team brings in an AI company, which develops an ML model that generates the customer documents automatically and virtually eliminates the need … Read more
Digitalization is fundamentally enabled by three core technologies: software, data and artificial intelligence. The common denominator, which is inherent in a digitalized business, is that automation is at the heart of it. Digital technologies allow for automation to a much more significant extent than traditional technologies. We see this reflected in companies: whereas in traditional … Read more
This week, I had a wonderful conversation with the CEO of a midsized company (around 1,000 employees) to discuss business strategy and the implications on technology strategy in the overall context of digitalization. As the company supports its customers with digital solutions, it’s an example of the part of the economy that’s doing really well … Read more
This week, I had a meeting with the leadership team of a company that has asked me for help to accelerate their growth. We’ve been reconvening regularly and going through the process of defining who we are and what our purpose is as a business, identified the key avenues to accelerate growth, created a plan … Read more
DevOps, DataOps, MLOps – the number of different “Ops” combinations seems to have exploded over the last year or so. There are manifestos, meetups, lots of blog posts and research articles about these various approaches. In order to get clear on terminology, I think it’s good to define what we’re talking about. So, first, DevOps … Read more
In my last column, I presented our research agenda for AI engineering. This time, we’re going to focus on one of the topics on that agenda, ie data versioning and dependency management. Even though the big data era has been with us for over a decade now, many of the companies that we work with … Read more
Few technologies create a level of hype, excitement and fear these days as artificial intelligence (AI). The uninitiated believe that general AI is around the corner and worry that Skynet will take over soon. Even among those that understand the technology, there’s amazement and excitement about the things we’re able to do now and lots … Read more
Recently, I got an e-mail asking me why we should care about Agile if the overall product development process, including mechanics and electronics, is measured in years and is completely waterfall. The question took me by surprise. I’ve been working with Agile practices for the better part of two decades now and for me, it’s … Read more
