Continuous business value is only possible with continuous innovation

The past decade has witnessed the phenomenal rise of a slew of new, digital unicorns and firmly established the following realities:

• Change and continuous disruption are the dominant features of the knowledge driven economy
• Bulk of the technology innovations are predominantly software driven
• The pace of change and technology innovation can be quite breath-taking
• Yesterday’s pioneer and market leader can become just a footnote in the blink of an eye
• A constant and continuous ability to innovate, adapt, and transform are critical for survival

One overarching takeaway from the experience of the past decade, is the inescapable truth that it is no longer enough to be either the first player to hit the market with a new product, or disrupt the market with a big bang innovation. The first mover advantage is neither adequate nor sustainable, as newer and nimbler players are continuously disrupting with innovative products and services.

In this modern landscape of connected products and services, where the business and customer have a direct engagement, often the software is delivered as an ‘always on’ service. The emphasis is not on delivering a set of features or functions, but on supporting continuously evolving user-experiences. In other words, it is no longer enough to deliver one-time business value, but to meet the demand for delivering continuous business value, which has significant impact on how businesses approach software development; and this demand for continuous business value calls for continuous innovation capabilities.

While there is no single, magic bullet for continuous innovation, the below cited best practices will go a long way in putting the ISVs on the right path:

• Given the fact that software is driving innovation, mastering end-to-end development to delivery process is a must
• Best-in-class software development processes with automation must be adopted
• Implement DevOps for continuous delivery
• An unrelenting focus on innovation
• Avoid the big bang trap, and target incremental improvements and iterative releases to your products and services
• Try to stay ahead of the curve in terms of technology adaption
• Extreme customer centricity should drive your business and product strategy
• Extreme ease of use and UX should factor into your product design

In an ultra-competitive and disruptive business and technology landscape, only those with long-term vision, strategy, agility, and capacity for continuous innovation will stand a chance to survive and succeed.

The ability to build software in a traditional manner with a static process, is no longer sufficient. The need of the hour is to have dynamic and agile processes for rapid development and delivery of software enriched user experiences. Sometimes, the frequency of delivery could be even multiple times in a day, and this need for delivering continuous value has given rise to the notion of software factories.

• Software factory is a construct of people, process, and tools, supported by automation and governance.
• coMakeIT helps customers setup and run software factories that are fully integrated and capable of seamless delivery with contributions from geographically distributed teams.