Scaling a Software Business ― The Digitalization Journey

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

This book is intended primarily for practitioners who are facing the “softwareisation” of their business. It presents the Scaling Management Framework, a model based on collected experiences from companies that have already made the journey to give software a central role within the organization. The model is unique because it suggests a holistic method to analyze and plan your journey. It simply means that you can’t just focus solely on your products or services. You also have to look closely at your processes and your organization, the way you make decisions and get things done. Inevitably, these will have to change.

Software has changed the rules of the game. The world talks about the digitalization in industry and society – how the focus has shifted from producing tangible things towards software and services. This trend started many years ago, but is now affecting every company, whether it’s a software company or not. There are many companies that have already made a digitalization journey – and many are about to embark on this journey – like you. How do you transform your organization when software is becoming a critical part of your business?

This book comes with a map, a compass, and suggested journeys along with selected travel stories comprising best practices and lessons learned from past digitalization journeys. Use the map to find your way in the digitalization landscape, and use the compass to find the direction of your journey.

Brian Fitzgerald is Chief Scientist with Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre. He holds the Frederick Krehbiel II Professorship in Innovation in Business and Technology at the University of Limerick. His research focuses on innovative software development approaches.

Klaas-Jan Stol is a Research Fellow with Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre. He holds a PhD in Software Engineering from the University of Limerick. His research focuses on contemporary software development approaches, in particular innersourcing, opensourcing, and crowdsourcing.

Sten Minor holds a PhD in Computer Science. His industrial experience comes from Ericsson and Sony Ericsson where he has held several senior positions within software development and strategy. He is currently innovation director at MAPCI - Mobile and Pervasive Computing Institute at Lund University and CEO of Sigrun Software Institute.

Henrik Cosmo holds a MSc and Tech. Lic. in Software Engineering. He cumulates 25 years of experience from the global wireless industry, where he has held senior positions in large multinational companies as well as in small Silicon Valley startups, in organizations developing and operating software.