It’s not often clear what is needed for the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Stephan Schmidt has written a good analysis:
Along with many of the commenters on the linked post, I’d hardly call it a “long lost formula”, but the idea of using real, concrete, research to decide what to make and who will buy it has merit worth remembering. It’s common enough for the market research to start once a product exists, but if the product is fundamentally flawed, or has nobody wiling to pay for it, then it is probably too late.
When you are thinking of starting a business everyone says you have to have a business plan, but the content of the business plan is all about money, and the focus of a business plan is assumed to be on gaining investment. But is this really the case?
Robert Ochtel feels strongly that to concentrate on the business plan solely as a tool to prise out investment is missing the main point. You should do it, but you should do it for yourself and your business.
Today many entrepreneurs complain that their potential investors do not read their business plans. With an average of over 300 hours of effort required to develop a complete business plan, do they have a point? I say no!
Entrepreneurs – Business Plans Are Not Developed For Your Investors « Robert Ochtel’s Blog.
If you are thinking of entering the battleground of development for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, and hope to make your fortune selling through the AppStore you really should watch this video.
@GeeknRolla – What’s the frequency Kenneth?: The trials of a mobile apps startup.
Jof Arnold of GeekFu.com lays bare the process and the statistics of iPhone app development.
Wil Shipley, founder of The Omni Group and apparently pretty well-known entrepreneur in the Apple ecosystem put together a presentation for the Apple WWDC conference giving his views on why it is better to develop and sell software for Apple systems.
This is an interesting take on how to choose deployment platforms, and even just reading the slides conveys some of his enthusiasm. I imagine the actual event was very compelling.
I have two main reservations, though. The first is that the idea of developing for specific platforms seems a bit old fashioned in these days of ubiquitous web and mobile convergence, and the second is that the same logic could largely apply to any niche market which has not yet been swamped with free or low-cost options.
Ian McCaig, CEO of lastminute.com gave a talk titled Innovation in a Crisis at the SPA 2009 conference, with some very interesting thoughts. For example
Labs are a research division without permanent staff, where people volunteer to participate in labs projects and can take a break from their day-to-day routine by participating in something interesting. Staff in labs rotate so that different people get to play with innovative ideas. Hack-days are intensive coding competitions that are organised to give people a break from their daily duties but also promote innovation and allow new ideas to bubble up.
Read more at: Gojko Adzic » SPA 2009: How to foster innovation in a crisis.
Testing of software systems is hard. Testing of convergent systems is much harder. Every additional device, every additional style of interaction, every additional class or role of users adds a whole extra dimension of tests. Pretty soon you get to a point where a new release of the system is impossible to test with the test team and time available.
Historically, there have been a few kinds of responses to this.
Now it appears that there may be a way around this problem. Dionysios G. Synodinos has written an ineresting article at InfoQ about “crowdsourcing” testing of such applications.
InfoQ: Crowdsourcing JavaScript Integration Testing with Test Swarm.
A cynical view might be that this is little more than a formalisation of the approach of releasing an untested product, calling it a “beta”, and waiting for customers to complain. There is a chance, though, that engaging a wide range of people explicitly as testers and providing them with the information they need to test the system thoroughly might result in a better, cheaper, and (most importantly) scalable answer to this kind of problem.
A good summary from Thoughtworks of the applicability of “lean” techniques to a financially-constrained business.
Information week reports on some figures from ComScore which show huge growth in US mobile access to the web.
Mobile Web Usage Doubles — Cell Phone — InformationWeek.
Anyone creating or managing a web project without considering mobile users is missing something important.
For years Frank Carver has been paying attention to the strange world of convergent technology. During that time he has discussed and researched broad subject areas, come to some surprising conclusions, produced and distributed digital media, scattered ideas and opinions like sparks from a firework, and above all consulted for businesses both large and small to help develop and deploy successful systems, services, and products in this highly complex arena.
