“Software is eating the world”. In his famous article written in 2011 Mark Andreessen wrote that “we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy”. He expected many more industries to be disrupted by software and was proven right.
But software is not only an asset, it is a debt as well. Many, if not all, companies struggle keeping a balance between delighting existing customers and providing them with the best service, and the ability to innovate and invest in new markets and solutions. Your existing software inventory, holds you back.
During my time at Philips Image Guided Therapy systems, we were able to bring a completely new platform to the market, while halving the code base from 8 milion lines of code to 4. Reducing software inventary is critical to be able to reduce the percentage R&D required for maintenance and increase innovation speed.
How we did it? Read about it in my presentation on slideshare: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-your-team-needs-code-down-target-dirk-jan-swagerman/
Oh: and make sure that your software remains working during each step! For inspiration, this is a timelapse of the Dutch ‘rijkswaterstaat’ creating a 70 meter tunnel under the A12 highway, in one weekend!!