Lean by Design

My name is Ross MacLeod, and I am a senior technology management executive, CEO of startup and independent consultant living in Ottawa, Canada.

‘Lean by Design’ represents my thoughts and perspectives on some of the many issues and opportunities for improving development of software products. The (long) Software Crisis has been with us for 20 years now, but today a number of factors are coming together that create unprecidented opportunities and risk related to our ability to effectively manage software product development. Some examples include; the influence of Open Source Software (OSS) as well as other Open Innovation models,  Agile development methods, Model Driven Development, Domain Specific Languages, Cloud based system architectures and the growing diversity of applicable business models.

Those that are able to effectively capitalize on these innovations will grow and prosper. Those that don’t will most certainly be forced from business. And unlike situations in the recent past, it is no longer just software product companies that face these risks and opportunities. Instead, given the growing strategic importance of software to product and service value in other domains, software product development effectiveness has become crucial for a wide range of other product companies. Software Development excellence must be a cornerstone of the corporate strategy for these companies to prosper. But the challenge is that these capabilities are both difficult and very expensive to acquire. It is my hope that this blog will go some way to helping these business and technology leaders understand their software development opportunities and challenges.