Smart Products contain more and more embedded and connected software features. The trend is called Product Digitization. What happened in the factories as Industry 4.0 happens now on the product realization side of the business.
This has quite some impact on how product realization is organized: who is leading the innovation, who decides where to use the resources, how can we be sure we can deliver in time what we promised to the market, who decides what we deliver, how can we upgrade our software components while in the market, which department is the coordinating department, how can we make sure everybody works in the same strategic direction?
The discussion around these questions is very actual because of the Agile movement, inspired by software development methodologies. The idea is that every department should work in an Agile way. Because of this many companies suffer from frictions between organizational functions, departments and disciplines, that own specific work assignments in the entire product realization process. The nature of work can be very different. These frictions are hurdles for company success. How to deal with the differences?
The session offered a Governance Framework, a Management Methodology, that coordinates seamless product realization and launch, while respecting different disciplinary methodologies and tools. It will argue that differences are natural, and fine, and that companies don’t have to transform into one and the same development methodology to be productive. On the contrary.
Huub Rutten is Vice President of Product Research & Application Development and co-founder of Sopheon, a provider of software, expertise, and best practices that help companies achieve exceptional long-term revenue growth and profitability.
Huub Rutten spent 15 years in the education and research sector where he taught linguistic disciplines and communication skills at Institutions of Higher Education and Universities in the Netherlands. Thereafter he moved into automation technology in business, serving as a strategy development consultant and business processes reengineer in several industries (specifically manufacturing, insurance, banking, aerospace, chemicals and healthcare).
He also served as a full-time adjunct professor at the European Institute for Public Administration (EIPA), responsible for IT politics and strategies of the European Commission. Today he works with many companies, prospects as well as customers in various areas of Innovation Management.
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