“Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress” – Ted Levitt

Yes, I am talking about the source of innovation called ‘Producteering’ for which Aspire has been awarded and I am pleased to inform you that Aspire has been chosen among the TOP 50 IT Innovators 2009 in India!  NASSCOM, the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in India, announced the IT Innovators 2009 award recently.

‘Producteering’ approach has been chosen among the “Top 50 innovations of 2009″. We had nominated ‘Producteering’ under the Process Innovation category and the following were showcased:

The key Principles and Practices of Producteering and its relevance to our customers
Our Project/Technical Health Audits that help fine tune our effectiveness/efficiency on a periodic basis
Propel platform that helps shrink go-to-market timeframes by 30%
Impact Training that transforms fresh engineers in to Producteers
www.producteering.org -This forum where we write articles about best practices of software product engineering and product management

Overall, Producteering was positioned is our approach to building great software and also as a key factor in delivering successfully and profitably in fixed-bid or risk-reward models.  Here is what one of customers says about Producteering:

Two years ago when we were looking for a development partner, we were attracted by Aspire Systems’ “Producteering” messages. We were concerned that many offshore groups were too “project” focused and didn’t understand the nature of agile product development. It was essential that we found a “partner” – an organization that could work closely with our product management and development teams to design, build and maintain our SaaS solutions. We found that in Aspire Systems. “Producteering” was more than a slogan. They’ve been a “true” development partner. - Steve, VP – Solutions Management & Development, Education Software Vendor

About the Awards: The objective of the Innovation Initiative is to encourage innovative practices across the IT-ITES Industry and provide support for these by developing an ecosystem that is conducive to fostering innovativeness, technological advancement and the creation of IP.  Through this initiative, Nasscom seeks to position the Indian IT Industry as a thought leader engaged in technology advancement. Further details are available at the NASSCOM site.

I see this award as a milestone in our Producteering journey of following the 4P’s approach.

Happy Innovating – All Producteers!

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Aspire Systems is very glad to announce its participation as a Silver Sponsor of Confluence 2010, an R&D Globalization conference, on March 17th & 18th in Santa Clara, California. This is an invitation-only event for the globalization community, organized by Zinnov management consulting.

It will feature interactive panel discussions, keynotes and networking around the theme of “Business Transformation Through Globalization” and bring together senior decision makers from across the industry. The event will be a platform for discussing post-economic slowdown trends and changes, their ramifications on the globalization compass, and ideas to formulate the roadmap for the future.

Gowri Subramanian, Aspire’s CEO, is also a panelist at the event and he will be sharing his views on “Is globalization a constraint on innovation capability?”.

Shankar Krishnamoorthy, CTO of Aspire Systems,will be presenting at the “AGILE Best Practices for Distributed Product Development” workshop at the event.

We look forward to seeing you at our booth!

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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• Distributed R&D: Beyond just Cost Benefits (Aspire Panel Discussion)
• Agile Development Tools, Myths and Best Practices – Interview with Siddharta Govindaraj

Hear from experienced practitioners who have set up offshore teams and worked with distributed teams spread across UK, India and other countries.

Moderator		Panelist		Panelist		Panelist
Pari Natarajan		Derek Waugh		Steve Jones		Gowri Subramanian
CEO and Co-founder, Zinnov Consulting		Director – Software Engineering, NCR		Technology Director, Cybit		Co-founder & CEO, Aspire Systems

Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Time: 11 AM GMT

(Registration is Free)

Over the last several years, many packaged software vendors/ software providers have outsourced their development needs with cost-cutting in mind. However, that’s no longer the case. While having global R&D delivery capabilities are important, there’s more to it that just cost advantages.

Today, from architecture and design to development and support, offshore R&D teams are working hand-in-hand with their onsite counterparts to deliver innovative software at a faster pace and high quality. Global teams are now helping companies stay ahead of the curve, innovate and grow – and those who don’t utilize their capabilities are likely to be the ones left behind.

But not everyone reaps the benefits of globalization equally. So what are the factors that can help you leverage distributed R&D?

Join Aspire Systems for a Panel discussion on “Distributed R&D: Beyond just Cost Benefits”.  Some of the themes discussed will be:

• The impact of distributed R&D on software companies/teams
• How do you leverage software/product engineering expertise of global players?
• Challenges in outsourcing and how to overcome them?
• Globalization – myths and realities
• Best practices pertaining to globalization & distributed development

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Concept projects can help startup software companies uncover clues to more distant futures. Once you have the idea and decide on what is possible, it’s time to pull out the camera and start filming – not the whole movie, because that would be expensive and you don’t know the complete story yet. Instead, start with just a movie trailer.

You’ve seen hundreds of trailers. Everybody loves them. Little one-to-two minute teasers. It’s a great way to capture the essence, the core of the emotional experience that you are seeking in your software product. The goal is a visual prototype.

Try writing the print advertisement as you are developing your product. This forces you to crystallize your unique selling proposition. The movie trailer helps you focus your team in a way no design or marketing plan can ever manage to. The other advantage to making the trailer before making the real thing is that if you can’t make a compelling trailer, may be it’s better to back to the drawing board. Use the popular ‘T-shirt Test’: If you can’t make a T-shirt about it, may be you don’t have a compelling story yet.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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• Minimum Viable Amazon.com
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SaaS has gained enormous momentum in the recent years. Almost all software vendors are considering SaaS in their Software roadmap – either a transition strategy or a hybrid strategy by adding a new product line to their existing suite of software products. Market trends also promise SaaS to be the “Future of Software”!

With the evolutionary changes in the cloud market, the path to SaaS has become multi-fold. It is vital for software providers to understand the SaaS development and infrastructure eco-system.

Join us for this live-webinar presented by Janaki Jayachandran, Head of ‘Aspire Systems’ SaaS Center of Excellence, as he lay out the ways of going on-demand. Some of the topics being discussed in this session:

- Different approaches available in building your SaaS solution

- Various factors influencing each SaaS adoption path

- Relate their relevance to your business and product requirements

Date: Feb 18th, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM ET/ 08:00 AM PT/ 04:00 PM BST/ 09:30 IST

Registration is Free!

Click here to register

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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To expand on the Minimum Viable Product theme we started discussing here earlier, I’d like to share a few examples of MVP stories.

MVP is a state of mind that is all about acting before you have all the answers, about taking chances, stumbling a bit, getting up and running. Consider Jeff Bezos’s story about how he launched internet’s first multi-billion dollar business literally on the run.

In 1994, he came across a startling statistic that the annual growth rate of web would ramp up to 2300%. To tap such an explosive growth, he hurriedly made a list of things he could sell online – from music to clothing before settling on books. Within weeks, he quit his Wall Street job, and had his things packed in a van without knowing where exactly he was going. He had Boulder, Portland, and Lake Tahoe in mind. Unable to decide, he instructed the moving van to simply head west. He called the driver next day and asked him to go to Seattle.

Bezos was doing exactly what innovators do: breaking a problem down into parts, taking on-the-fly decisions in parallel. How could a moving van begin its journey without knowing a state, let alone an address? The reasonable thing to do would have been to first decide the destination. But Bezos gained a day of internet time by launching his ship before he had charted his New World. As his moving van traveled westward from New York, Bezos flew to Texas from where his wife drove the family to Seattle while he sat in the passenger seat carving out a business plan.

Think about it: nothing on paper, no fixed place to start his imagined company, yet he was already moving firmly towards his destiny. While on the way, he even took a detour through North California to interview potential vice presidents of development.

Once he started operations, the same principles continued to apply – get it up, get it out was the motto. Function preceded style and editorial content. Low on graphics and animation, the site loaded fast and excelled at the basics – making it easy to search and buy books.

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Fact 1: The first version of the iPhone did not have the ‘copy-and-paste’ feature, although the WinMob did, and the classic Mac OS had it, many many years ago.

Fact 2: When Jeff Bezos started operations at Amazon.com, ‘get it up and get it out’ was the motto. Function preceded style and editorial content. Low on graphics and animation, the site loaded fast and excelled at the basics – making it easy to search and buy books.

What can we learn about building software successfully, from the above seemingly straight-forward facts? Quite a few things actually.

A decade ago, many software startups would be in stealth mode for ages, building the perfect product, burning huge amounts of cash – without actually getting users involved. The “build it and they will come” mentality was all too prevalent.

Today, the concept of MVP or Minimum Viable Product is gaining importance. (MVP is not a very new concept – in fact, it’s a core tenet of modern product marketing) Many software companies have started to realize that building software without customer validation and feedback can be a complete waste of resources. Tech start-ups, especially, can really benefit from building ‘just enough’ features that (a) make the software functional (b) enable early adopters to sign-up and pay (c) help bring real feedback from the market.

Most ideas don’t play out the way they were envisioned. Very rarely can you get the right product out the first time you try. By scoping right, startups not only burn less cash but increase their chances of success by being able to take their products to actual customers, fail fast and continue to iterate quickly based on regular feedback.

NOTE to regular readers: We’ve been dormant for a while on the forum now – our apologies – but we’re back, along with a minor update to the forum and we hope to keep the momentum going! Come join the discussion!

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Aspire Systems is hosting a breakfast event in Chicago on December 4th, 2009, titled “SaaS Adoption Challenges: Identify, Measure and Manage”. If you are a traditional on-premise vendor looking to transition to or considering SaaS, please join us for an interactive session on the challenges you can expect along the way and how you can identify, manage and overcome them.

Shankar Krishnamoorthy, CTO of Aspire Systems will be discussing various aspects of what it takes to transition to an on-demand model, or build a SaaS solution from scratch. He will also cover the importance of having a thorough understanding of the SaaS ecosystem.

Date & Time : December 4th, 2009
08.15 am – 10.00 am

Venue: TechNexus
200 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 1500
Chicago, IL 60606
+1.312.924.1026

Agenda:
08.15 am – 08.30 am: Registration, Networking and Breakfast
08.30 am – 09.30 am: SaaS Adoption Challenges: Identify, Measure and Manage
09.30 am – 10.00 am: Networking

Seats are limited, grab yours here!

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Image credit: http://www.star-collector.net/

Roger The Dodger first captured public imagination when he won the MVP honors in the 1971 Super Bowl and went on to become a popular quarterback in the history of (American) football. So what does that nugget of history have to do with SaaS? Read on. After he retired from NFL, Staubach started working in the Texas commercial real estate business. He saw how frustrated commercial tenants were when they dealt with landlords. As you know, buying/leasing office or retail space is not a simple process (http://www.zananetwork.com/business-learning/wiki/real-estate/faq/index.aspx) The traditional real estate brokers were, in general, driven by the commission fee that they could collect from both the buyer and the seller. In the process, a few rules were bent and I guess many a heart burnt. Enter Staubach. He asked: Why don’t we build a company that focuses on being the advocate of the users of office and industrial space? Staubach Co. was founded in 1977 with this simple yet powerful premise. At that time, it was indeed a pioneering effort in the brokerage business to build a company around tenants (as against owners or developers). What he recognized was that taking care of end-users/customers can actually help his business grow. To reinforce his approach, he offered the revolutionary “unconditional guarantee of value” – giving refunds to clients who thought they didn’t get the expected services/benefits. Though the refunds were not frequent, they did happen and it hurt. But for Staubach, there was no other way to prove the integrity and value. Do you now see a connect with the license-fee-mongering-product companies to SaaS and the service culture? Are they any such stories in other industries that can be considered fore-runners for the current SaaS trend in the software industry? Note: In July, 2008, The Staubach Company was sold to Jones Lang LeSalle for $613 million.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Here is an interesting approach to building software – www.softwarebynumbers.org developed by a team of two with a strong background in the technology industry and academia.

The IFM model tags financial benefits/returns to each major feature proposed for the software. At a fundamental level, it looks at software development as a value creation process which is how entrepreneurs tend to think about businesses at a macro level. An MMF, or minimal marketable feature, is the fundamental measure of software value employed by IFM.

MMFs are discrete units of value creation mapped to specific software features. They are the basic elements of an IFM development sequence. Net Present Value (NPV) is used as the measure as opposed to the usual suspect i.e. ROI. This model is not meant to be a substitute to established models such as Agile or iterative. In fact, the authors intended to strengthen such methodologies by introducing the financial aspect.

A quick description of NPV below (to jog your memory, just in case):

NPV: This is the net result of a multiyear investment expressed in today’s dollars. It recognizes that you would prefer to have $1.00 today to having $1.00 a year from now. If you earn 10% interest on your money, $1.00 today will be worth $1.10 a year from now. Or, the NPV of $1.10 one year hence is $1.00.

By considering the time value of money, it allows consideration of such things as cost of capital, interest rates and investment opportunity costs. It’s especially appropriate for long-term projects. But NPV doesn’t compare absolute levels of investment. It looks at cash flows, not at P&L – the way accounting systems do. Computing NPV requires use of a discount rate equal to some minimum desired rate of return. Determining that percentage may be the tricky part. In general, many IT projects use NPV only for large investments (eg:>$500k) as the process is complex and cumbersome.

ROI: Expected income divided by the amount originally invested

IFM is not new – it’s been around for about 4 years now. While IFM seems rational on paper, I wonder if it is feasible to do something like this in reality. There are several intangibles involved in an IT investment and those cannot be easily accounted for in such calculations. Long-term discipline in planning and execution is required for such initiatives. But at the very least, such calculations will trigger discussions within the product team and lead to evaluation and brainstorming of multiple ideas and options (apart from the heated arguments, fights etc).

At sunset (as against ‘at the end of the day’:) ), every decision-maker knows that data and numbers are attempts at rationalization of man’s intuitions and gut-feel decisions. That may be the single biggest reason why this model will never gain large scale adoption. What do you think?

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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