Continuous Improvementis IN!
Getting CI right is about capturing and realizing
what provides additional value to the customer. In almost
real-time. You must be agile and proactive to be always improving
your applications. This is about culture, methodology, and product
architecture.Just a few years back, this but be
difficult to realize - now, the pieces are coming
together.
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Key elements from Toyota/Kaizen/TQM spring to mind:
customer satisfaction drives our business - every
day, every employee can and should make suggestions for
improvements, change is on-going and incremental. Continuous
improvement of the customer experience and value.
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SCRUM is one of the Agile development
methodologies that allows for fast adaption to
changing objectives. With short development cycles of a few weeks,
new functionality and bug fixes can be introduced to the market in
a steady manner. Automated testing of the entire application can be
employed to secure that changes to code have not had negative
effects elsewhere.
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The architecture for CI needs to be
well-defined and modular to allow for functionality to be
implemented without having to tinker with large parts of the
existing application. Resources spend on architecture are
well-spend.
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Cloud Computing and the availability of
Virtual Servers from hosting providers has greatly improved the
operational flexibility as capacity can be deployed and removed on
the fly - if is has been thought into the architecture.
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Most functionality is left unchanged between each
increamental improvement and automated
testing is ideal to ensure that is really the
case.
According to the people who put their money where their
beliefs are, the future of software is about
delivering services in easy to understand, recurring
business models - SaaS. Continuous Improvement is
the natural extension of SaaS.
CI is what makes ISVs stay close to their
clients and their needs. And differentiates the
service companies from the product ones.
Give us a call, if you want to discuss how to
CI-enable your company.
Jesper Lindholt