Tag Archives: software

It All Starts With I

Yes, it’s true. Every new [business] project starts with an Idea, Inspiration, and often Innovation. That’s the beauty of starting new endeavors; the energy and motivation surges through your body as you cogitate on your project-to-be. There’s a world of opportunities before you, all you have to do is plan and execute.

What I’ve come to realize in the past years is that it’s easy to have ideas, but it’s unique to have innovative and inspiring ones. In fact, it’s only recently that I’ve recognized that not all ideas should be implemented. Embarking in a new business project is a difficult yet rewarding journey – it requires countless time and energy, which is why not just any project should be chosen. In the past years I’ve had numerous ideas, some of which I actually acted on, but in the end it’s not what I was looking for. In fact, I see business much like falling in love. If there’s something that bothers you and that just doesn’t seem right, the reality is that it probably isn’t. Don’t waist your valuable time there. I understood this clearly recently when I actually had a “ah ha” moment. An idea came to me, mostly based on a novel marketing strategy – in my opinion anyhow. It calls upon innovation, creativity, technology, and above all it has the potential of making a difference; positively impacting people’s lives, something hard to come by in trying times.

So here it is, I embark in week one with what I consider to be an outstanding idea. This is the first step in developing a new product or service. Once you’ve screened your idea and certain that it follows your interests, skills, and ambitions, the next step is to embark in a creative and strategic phase that I deeply love; the concept development. While I brainstorm on the overall concept, I’ve been gathering intelligence – industry statistics. I find it very important to do initial market research as you develop your concept as it allows you to fine tune good ideas and weed out bad ones. If there’s no market for it, don’t go there. So in the past week I’ve leveraged the wonderful online library and database at University of Phoenix, where I’m currently doing my MBA. I’ve managed to find exceptional market reports and trend information for the concept I’m working on. Priceless!!!

I don’t want to break the fun so here’s a first piece of info on what I’m doing. It involves web technology, but that’s not the forefront of the project, it’s used as leverage for the business. So no, I’m not building a software business this time – for the first time. It just turns out software isn’t my first interest.

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From Widgets to Software – Learning from the manufacturing industry

In the economic or business context, a widget is a generic word for a manufactured good or unit. Not surprisingly, the software industry has widely adopted the term in reference to small applications. If you Google the word you’ll find that Apple and Yahoo! use the term for their small desktop applications.

In fact, this isn’t the only concept that the software industry borrowed from manufacturing. This may astonish many of you, but the term Agile, relating to production, was actually first employed in the manufacturing industry in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. Companies that used “agile manufacturing” were those willing to think outside the box and that had taken major steps in becoming more customer-focused (McClellan, 2002). Agile software development stems directly from this lean approach to production. What’s interesting is that the “agile methodology” has been widely accepted by this industry; if you search for the term in online book stores, you’ll find thousands of results, even just within the IT related categories.

However, the agile methodology is really part of the broader concepts of lean and total quality management (TQM) that W Edwards Deming and others have pioneered and that have lead to the quality revolution in Japan. In fact, the astounding success of the Japanese private industry (e.g.: Toyota) was largely attributed to the production process quality, rather than research and development, through process innovation (Peach et. al, 2005).

Within TQM you’ll find statistical process control (SPC), which consists in monitoring process performance and variability through the statistical analysis of sample production data (Chase, Jacobs, Aquilano, 2006). Since processes are subject to natural and external variations, some of the core objectives of SPC consist in recognizing, quantifying, controlling and reducing process variations (Does, Schippers, Trip, 1997). Although such control methods may bring substantial benefits to service organizations, including increased efficiency and higher customer satisfaction, SPC doesn’t appear to yet have effectively made its way in the service industry (Roes, Dorr, 1997).

Approach

From such lessons, software organizations should look at defining organizational goals that aim at providing total quality to customers by systematically reducing waste, as well as continuously improving the organization as a whole through skills improvement, efficiency, and quality. To achieve this, organizations should look at defining and implementing processes that are:

  • Inline with organizational and customer goals
  • Lean and efficient
  • Measurable and Adaptable

Word of Caution

If you look at the automotive industry, where companies such as Toyota and Honda have largely dominated the market in terms of customer satisfaction, software organizations should be wary of what may come in the next years. Are Indian and Chinese based software companies the next Japanese quality revolution? In my opinion, absolutely! We’ve pumped billions of dollars in software outsourcing and with such an immense pool of skilled individuals I don’t see why or how the software industry won’t suffer from a similar blow.

I’ll be posting another article soon on this topic. Specifically on how to measure the software process.

References

Chase, R. B., Jacobs, F. R., & Aquilano, N. J. (2006). Operations management for competitive advantage (11th ed). New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin.

Does, R., Schippers, W., Trip, A. (1997). A framework for implementation of statistical process control, International Journal of Quality Science, 2(3), pp.181-198

McClellan, M. (2002). Collaborative Manufacturing: Using Real-Time Information to Support the Supply Chain (Hardcover), CRC Press

Roes, K., Dorr, D. (1997). Implementing statistical process control in service processes, International Journal of Quality Science, 2(3), p.149-166

Peach, H., Emeagwali, G., Wilson, F., Borisov, V., Dutta, D., Nakayama, S., Lins, R., Teixeira, M., Robbins, R. (2005). “technology in history” Science, Technology, and Society. Oxford University Press, Oxford Reference Online, Retrieved 21 October 2009 from http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t210.e110-s6

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