Unfinished Products

The humanitarian and global crisis we are experiencing today, the extend on how the crises changed the way we live and work, do have both immediate and long-lasting implications for how we will experience services and products we consume daily. Changes have been happening to create seamless remote engagement, diversification of supply-chains and increasing the scale of online and intelligent channels. Technology is and will be more and more on the vanguard of reshaping the consumer’s experience and the way we all generate societal value.

Accelerating the ability to launch new solid products and to create value for the consumer before the competition have been giving headaches to IT and Business for decades. Methodologies, way of working have been evolving reducing the time and cost of delivering software. For example, Lean-Startup _[1] with the Hypothesis Driven Development _[2] encourages companies to launch the Minimal Valuable Product (MVP) and to continuously increment the MVP capturing new consumers’ needs. Thanks to hypotheses those increments are tested against solid metrics and the user feedback. From a technology perspective, DevSecOps _[3] practices introduced a high degree of automation. DevSecOps makes the process of releasing software in production environment faster, more secure and with a higher degree of quality (e.g. software developer Syte, who offers retailers the technology to make online and mobile shopping experiences a breeze, deploys several times a day _[4]). So, if software innovation speed has been putting pressure for decades on companies, how the immediate and long-lasting implications of the nowadays’ tragic and challenging time will increase the pressure and the expectations?

To create sustainable models of seamless remote engagement – e.g. employees working and collaborating remotely, health services able to assist patients at home, automated home delivery services – we will need to accelerate further the proliferation of smart devices _[5] (e.g. wearables, thermometers, robots, drones, sensors) and the ecosystems where value is created and exchanged.

Companies, government authorities and customers are under a lot of pressure. Service and product providers will need to handle in a secure manner simultaneously the physical devices, the software component, the ecosystem and the customer experience.

Think of Philips Hue _[6]. The Hue bulb is designed to last for years, Philips updates the Hue app every 10 days _[7], the ecosystem changes the consumer experience anytime any day. Philips Hue is a continuously growing unfinished product. The Philips Hue’s ecosystem delivers product increments. As a natural selection, the Philips Hue’s ecosystem ensures the changes are evolutionary and bring new value to the consumer’s experience. For example, with the introduction of the motion sensor _[8] Philips Hue encourages the ecosystem to create new value addressing health and wellbeing use cases.

But what if the ecosystem is not able to provide the superior experience? Then the Hue bulb risks being just another bulb, a commodity good. Customers would be impacted too. To derive the right value of the smart device, customers must continuously update the product. Customers are losing the ownership of the physical product they buy _[9].

Expectations on companies are high: companies must build a partnership with their consumers creating a fluent feedback loop. Companies needs to leverage the ecosystems to exponentially increase the value their products bring to the consumers’ experience. To win in this space companies must create unfinished products.

Unfinished products are evolutionary and ready as per design to growth in the ecosystem. Aiming for perfection before release, is a lose-lose scenario. A scenario that would delay the ability for customers to benefit from the product and the exponential value the wider ecosystem provides.

To create or participating in ecosystem, companies must think strategically how they engage with consumers and partners. What value want to bring and share; how to evaluate and respond to feedback. Opening Application Programming Interfaces (APIs _[10]) and technical specifications to the ecosystem empowers partners to create new unfinished products’ accessories and features. That said, companies must look well beyond the pure technology and integration aspects of APIs.

_[1] The Lean Startup – the movement that is transforming how new products are built and launched – http://theleanstartup.com/

_[2] Hypothesis-Driven Development – how operating like a startup can improve your development efforts – https://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/hypothesis-driven-development/229000656

_[3] Bringing DevSecOps home – Accenture has begun the process of transforming the way it delivers its own IT solutions for more agility, higher quality and innovation – https://www.accenture.com/us-en/case-studies/about/cio-development-security-operations

_[4] Syte – Israeli startup powers image search for e-commerce using cloud-based AI, open-source support, and DevOps automation – Microsoft Customer Stories https://customers.microsoft.com/en-in/story/syte-partner-professional-services-azure

_[5] Smart device – definition from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_device

_[6] Philips Hue, smart home lighting made brilliant – https://www2.meethue.com/en-us

_[7] Philips Hue – iOS App release notes – https://www2.meethue.com/en-us/support/release-notes/ios

_[8] Philips Hue – motion sensor – https://www2.meethue.com/en-us/p/hue-motion-sensor/046677473389

_[9] The Dilemma of Smart Things trend #3 Accenture Technology Vision 2020 https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/technology/technology-trends-2020

_[10] Application programming interface – definition from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface