Jan Bosch
Over the last years, I have time and again run into the conflict that many companies experience between long term planning and continuous (agile) practices. In an embedded systems context, where the system contains mechanics and electronics in addition to software, the organization needs long term planning for “the atoms” because of manufacturing processes, ordering … Read more
This week I worked with two very different companies on what started out as very different topics, but that ended up at the same place: bad decision making due to the reliance on experience, beliefs, customer insights sometimes decades old, etc. So, the discussion turned towards decision making and how to develop processes where data … Read more
During a conference in Vienna, I listened to a keynote from a researcher from a large industrial company. The talk was full of the promise of IoT, connectivity, cloud, edge computing and apps and the business benefits that could be realized. The presenter did a good job, but I have heard these presentations on the … Read more
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
Reflecting on software intensive companies during the summer break made me think about the way investment decisions are made and what new approaches, such as continuous integration and deployment as well as data analytics, mean for these investment decisions. A key principle that I learned while working in Silicon Valley is to minimize investment between … 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
As I am starting up my weekly blog posts again after a great vacation in Japan and the Netherlands, I thought I’d start with a more personal post. The trigger for this is that (drum-rolls please) I turned 50 this summer, meaning that I’ve been walking around on this rock hurtling itself through space for … Read more
Another week of travel behind me while working with great teams at really wonderful European companies. As I typically get involved to work with organizations to introduce new platforms or new businesses or to realize fundamental transformations, I work with cross-functional teams where individuals from different parts of the organization are put together in order … Read more
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
This week I gave two keynote presentations at two different conferences (ICSOB 2017 in Essen and EASE 2017 in Karlskrona – please don’t ask me how many days on the road I log every year). As part of my keynotes, I bring up our “Stairway to Heaven” model (see figure below) and the adoption of … Read more
