Product Innovation Requires More Flexible Software Delivery – Study Reveals

September 27th, 2011 by BrightCloud

Forrester Consulting conducted a study on behalf of IBM to better understand the increasingly important role of software innovation in product development.

Forrester surveyed 106 product development professionals in the US and the UK. Forrester’s study yielded four key findings:

• Customer insights are not shared with the broader product development community. While a vast majority (93%) of development decision-makers surveyed have implemented specific initiatives to better capture the voice of their customers, only 16% of product professionals surveyed worked in organisations that shared customer insights and analytics with the broader community online.

• Innovation demands a collaborative development environment. 59% of product development professionals surveyed expect their organization to take steps toward improved innovation by better connecting development teams and enabling more collaboration.

• Innovation demands faster software delivery. Over half of the survey respondents wanted to speed up delivery by over 50%, with 21% wanting delivery to be at least twice as fast.

• Along with speed, software flexibility is key to overcoming barriers to innovation. Forrester found that the biggest roadblocks to software innovation for products were that product developers were too busy solving day-to-day problems, followed by product delivery taking too long, then by existing products being very hard to change due to old technology. The innovation mandate requires product developers not only to speed software and product delivery, but also to increase software flexibility.

Read the whole report: Product Innovation Requires Flexible Software Delivery

 

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