Six Practices Transforming Systems Engineering

by

Many of the companies that I work with are embedded systems companies, meaning that the products, systems and solutions sold by these companies consist of mechanical, electronic and software parts. Traditionally, software was only a small part of these systems, which resulted in the system engineering process to be driven by the mechanical and to … Read more

Five Reasons Why Speed Matters …

by

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

Welcome to the Digital You!

by

Digitalization is the most impactful development in society. Everything in our lives these days is driven by software. Ranging from software enabled toothbrush ecosystems to self-driving cars and from quantified self movements to factory 4.0 initiatives, it’s clear that we’re in the early days of the 4th industrial revolution. In the words of Marc Andreessen, … Read more

Digital you – Episode 1: Interview with Björn Ekelund

by

Welcome to the “digital you” podcast – the place where we explore the implications of living in a digital world.

Often referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, digitalization is the major trend in industry, business and society. It affects everyone, including you, both in our private lives and at work.

In this podcast, I interview people that are digital leaders and are living the transformation to see what we can learn from them in terms of mindset, approaches, best practices and traps to avoid. The goal is to make you better at what you do and helping you to be a digital citizen and professional in a rapidly changing world.

In this episode I meet with Björn Ekelund from Ericsson research where he leads hardware and devices research as well as research into electromagnetic fields.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Why R&D Sets Business Strategy

by

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

Half The Features You Build Are Waste

by

Over the last two decades or so, I have worked with companies on their R&D efficiency. R&D efficiency, to me, is concerned with creating as much value as possible for every unit of R&D effort (person hours, currency, etc.). Value can be created in many ways, but a pretty good approximation is the frequency of … Read more

Innovation Is Hard Work

by

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

9 Out Of 10 in R&D Work On Commodity

by

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

Why I stepped down as general chair for ICSA 2017

by

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