Personal Learning Log
Throughout
the past 12 weeks, I have had the chance to deep-dive into the world of
“Digital Innovation”, the specialisation for my postgraduate studies at UCD
Michael Smurfit Business School Dublin. The first semester, consisting of three
different modules, covers a wide variety of skills and knowledge in the field
of IT and business strategy, managerial competences and software development.
Whereas the course “Managing Strategy and Innovation” focused more on the
strategic dimension of business, the course “Design, Development and
Creativity” focused on the operational dimension. Learning outcomes of “Skills
for Business Enquiry” included the various critical thinking and analysis
capabilities of a businessperson necessary to execute both, operational and
strategic tasks.
Figure 1: Digital Innovation Master of Science,
Semester One Core Focus
For
me, the course ‘Design, Development and Creativity’ represented a crucial core
module for everything related to software design, development the challenges
going in hand with leading and managing creative and technical teams.
Prior to my experience at Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, I developed a technological product myself. I had a background in Business and understood the key challenges of product design, development and team management. However, I was not aware that this would be profoundly different when this product is a technological. As our resources were limited, we worked with the development team of a partner who agreed to provide his development manpower in return for equity. The main difficulty was planning and guiding the activities and team members. I did not have a clear understanding of how long specific development tasks would take, neither how many people would be necessary to accomplish them. Not to mention that I had never written a single line of code myself and hence, spoke a different “development”-language than my software development team.
I did
not feel any difficulties with the process itself, including customer centrism,
feedback and iteration rounds and daily meetings to update the process status
quo and dispatch work load and tasks. I had worked in a tech-company builder
and investor in Switzerland and knew how the teams worked. The main problem for
me was that I was not able to see the on-going tasks and see how the product
evolved every minute, hour and day, becoming more and more the product we
wanted it to be. The intangibleness and invisibility of this product
development process was frustrating. I felt like we did not move forwards at
all and concentrated on partnership building, relationship management and
physical prototypes to get feedback from customers (wireframes, design thinking
etc). This however generated new ideas every time that the development team
could not incorporate. In the end, the partner had to undergo technical changes
himself and needed his manpower, putting us on the waiting bench. After 3
months and when I received a Scholarship to precede my studies, we agreed to
end our agreement and move on. This led to the major learning: if I ever wanted
to incorporate a managerial position in ‘Tech’, I would need to understand what
is going on in the heads and fingertips of software development teams.
In the
frame of our course, we encountered the exact same issues and difficulties I
felt during my time in the incubator. Every reading, followed by class discussions,
was circling around real-life situations and difficulties in software
development teams and companies. Often, I could relate to the different topics:
the challenges of guiding software development teams, the frustration of the
intangibility of the product, difficulties in planning and time scaling,
creativity and design issues and much more.
I now
understand that five dimensions are particularly different for
technical/software product development than for physical:
1. Quality
2. Cost
3. Time
4. Scope (difficulties in planning)
5. Management/Leadership Style
Experience
and judgement come into play in optimising and idealising the product/software development lifecycle.
Figure
2. Determinants of an Ideal Software
Development Lifecycle
Digital
acumen and an in-depth understanding of relevant software development processes
and leadership styles are also crucial for a successful management of new
software-enabled products. The most insightful learning outcome for me concerns
the different forms of the software development, particularly XP, Agile and
SCRUM. Before the 'agile revolution', software development teams have been
primary working with the waterfall methodology. Beck (1999) introduced the
Extreme Programming methodology as one of the early adopters of agile software
development methodologies. Rather than working on a process of 1.Analysing, 2.
Designing , 3. Implementing and 4. Testing, the agile is an adaptive, iterative
method where these activities are all executed throughout the software
development process.
However,
I think that agile methodology seems to be more of a philosophy rather than a
simple method to apply. The methodology not only needs to fit into the context
given, but also the team has a primary influence on whether the process is
successful or not. Krutchen (2007) explains agile as a culture. The idea that
software development becomes a team activity where the members of the group
code in pairs, interact with each other, test, iterate and challenge their idea
and quality continuously requires a strong team spirit and increases the
complexity of managing these teams. This is where SCRUM came into play.
Williams et al. (2011) explains SCRUM as: 'an agile software development
process that works as a project management wrapper around existing engineering
practices to iteratively and incrementally develop software.' (Scrum +
Engineering Practices: Experiences of Three Microsoft Teams, Williams et al.,
2011)
These
- originally - software terms and methodologies have now been appropriated by
other teams to develop and manage their business models, products and projects
to become more customer centric, iterative and more focused on rapid testing. Teams
mix up the methodologies to fit into their individual context. While extreme
programming (XP) normally requires the customer to be involved in the
development process, the product owner or another leading member of the team
often replaces this role. Many teams do not label the way they work as
"agile", "SCRUM" or "extreme programming" but
rather define themselves as opponents to the "waterfall model" (or
other old stagnant project management and development methods). This is
something I could relate to particularly in the startup world. Nowadays, we can
discover these lean development methods even in the development process of
physical goods or new strategies and business models. Multiple iterations,
early feedback and adaptable product development go along with the credo 'fail cheap,
fail quick, try better.' Concepts I only
knew from the book “The Lean Startup” so far. 'The lean startup'-approach
focuses in rapid prototyping, multiple iterations of the model and testing
before engaging in a new business model or strategy. Human-centered-design and
design thinking methods that involve the customer in the development process
have become the source of creating sustainable products and business models.
However,
as managing technical teams and projects seems not to be difficult enough, a
digital innovation manager needs to make the balancing act from managing the
technical product innovation and envision future business.
Software
develops quickly and so do the customer needs. Assessing customer needs can
become very difficult when they change over time. Every innovation influences
customer expectations and needs. In the ‘90s, a mobile phone needed to be able
to setup phone connections and deliver messages from one device to another.
Today, it is normal that the phone features a camera, can connect to the cloud
and is rather a portable computer than a simple phone. Not only the
expectations changed but also the original purpose of a phone has changed and
become much more sophisticated. As the needs and desires shift with the
innovations, we need to know what the customer wants, before he knows it. But
how ? When an idea is so novel that the potential customer doesn't understand
it or doesn't have the desire to own it yet? We need to create the desire to
own it and therefore, we need creative people and be able to manage these
creative minds. This means that a digital innovation manager needs to be able
to engage in future trends, create new innovative products and services and at
the same time, manage the existing business.
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