Software development becomes company development

I have already written a few times about the fact that I think practically every business will be software-based sooner or later. There is literally no area that cannot be optimized with highly integrated software.

I simply believe that, sooner or later, software will become the No. 1 asset of every successful company. Software that maps the entire business logic and intelligence.

That’s why I’m always amazed when decision-makers on the one hand tell me about the challenge of digitalization. The need for more technology and software. But in the same breath, they also clearly state that they “don’t want to become a software company” and don’t want to employ their own programmers. That doesn’t go together.

Changing understanding of software companies

I often notice certain inhibitions in relation to software development and I think this has to do with the fact that today’s decision-makers themselves don’t have the faintest idea of what software development is.

Most people therefore find this activity abstract and distance themselves from the supposed complexity. On the one hand, this is understandable, but on the other hand, it should be the logical consequence of the pressure from digitalization to acquire at least basic knowledge in this area. I don’t mean that CEOs should now attend coding courses.

But it would be helpful if people in management were familiar with general processes and the methodology in development. If they could better assess why things cost time and money.

This would prevent people from turning their thoughts away from solving the challenges posed by digitalization. Imagine if everyone around you suddenly only spoke Italian. What would you do? I think sooner or later you would try to understand Italian better, if you don’t already know it, and learn it.

People generally adapt very quickly to their environment. Companies should do the same.

“No, we don’t want to become a software company”

What a software company is today is more unclear than ever before. Is Amazon a software company? Or Tesla? Or Apple? It hasn’t been clear for a long time.

In fact, all successful companies use software light-footedly to run and develop their business. They use software in the same way that companies started using electricity in the past. It would never occur to them to call themselves a software company in the traditional sense. Nor would a company today call itself an electricity company just because it uses electricity.

The most normal thing in the world

I believe that building software yourself as a company will be the most natural thing in business in a few years’ time. That doesn’t mean that software service providers or software manufacturers will disappear. On the contrary. The bottom line is that the demand will increase for suppliers and service providers who help larger companies to set up and scale their own development teams.

Opportunity for providers

For providers, this means that it is becoming increasingly important to be able to work together with customer teams. This is more difficult for many software service providers than one would think at first glance. This is because there are always different “schools of thought” about how things should be solved and set up when it comes to development. The fact that many roads lead to Rome and that not everything that has been “invented here” is the only true solution is something that, in my opinion, still requires a lot of rethinking on both the provider and customer side.

Software service providers who have recognized this, however, support their customers better and are able to build and maintain long-term, project-independent customer relationships. And that is what we in the software industry actually want to do.