Should you care about software quality? Yes, every company is a software company.
Technology has become permanently embedded in our day-to-day activities, producing several products and services which truly have transformed our lives. From wearable electronics which provide real-time readouts, to smart assistants, music streaming services and 3D printers, it’s hard to remember life without technology whirring in the background powering everything we do.
Poor software quality and software noise has caused blurred lines
Not so long ago, there was a clear distinction between tech and non-tech companies. Facebook was a flashy software company and Ocado a humble grocery delivery service. Now the lines between these companies are heavily blurred. Facebook continues to remain at the frontier of tech, with fingers now carefully placed in a cryptocurrency pie; whilst Ocado has placed hefty investments in autonomous vehicles, digital twins and AI to make grocery deliveries more efficient than ever before. One of the largest retailers on the planet, Amazon is a tech company.
Today, if you intend to set-up a company regardless of your sector, the software you build, buy and deploy will either propel you or hold you back. Software is a crucial component of the business innovation cycle and businesses recognise this with research showing more than half have digital plans in place. Innovative software allows teams to learn, adapt and deliver products with the power to quench the consumer thirst for better, faster and easier ways to lead life. Ensuring the applications embedded in your business processes are of high software quality is the key to breaking ahead of the pack, as it helps businesses to keep their data secure, minimise software risk and vulnerabilities and ensure an unrivalled digital user experience.
Boardroom bosses need Software Intelligence to be software savvy
Too often technology leaders lack the insights they need for boardroom analysis, with recent research revealing less than 50% of CIOs believe they have enough knowledge to make accurate software design decisions. Often large enterprises recognise the importance of software but learn through making mistakes, rather than trying to spot software flaws before they occur with 13% of software performance issues not discovered until after an application is released.
In recent years, many business leaders have learned the hard way the sheer amount of effort and insights required to simply keep the lights on to secure systems, with 70% of CIOs stating their teams spend more than 50% of their time finding the problem, rather than fixing it. CIOs and IT leaders need to place software at the forefront of boardroom discussions, and base IT system decisions on managing it alongside other business priorities to demonstrate how software directly influences every aspect of the business. This dives deeper than the apps and websites created, into software which allows the business to function at a fundamental level. Understanding how software interacts and affects businesses is crucial to an organisations’ business model, and can be achieved through Software Intelligence, a deep analysis of applications architecture which probes for application risks and potential vulnerabilities.
Embrace Software Intelligence with open arms to drive software quality and health
For those who are not familiar with complex software estates, learning can be a daunting task. To truly understand their own enterprise software, and be able to have productive conversations with IT, many business leaders are turning to Software Intelligence. Software Intelligence is an automated method that drills deep into the inner structure of applications to provide easily digestible insights on software health and architecture compliance.
Software Intelligence can probe for flaws within software such as security and performance. More than this, Software Intelligence provides a common language for IT and business teams to discuss Software Health and Architectural Design. This ease of communication allows fact-based decisions to be made, reducing the time taken to convert business requirements into technical requirements significantly.
Software Intelligence also aids technology teams to demonstrate the value they have and their direct impact in contributing to the organisations running and profitability. The software lessons learnt from such powerful insights can show where issues need to be resolved or how advantages can be harnessed to drive the business forward.
Technology’s consumption of the world shows no signs of slowing down. Matching the set pace is essential in order to stay competitive and creating top quality software should be top of business leaders’ agenda. Without the use of Software Intelligence to monitor this software quality, companies should be prepared to fall behind the pack.
Don't miss this week's CxO of the Week, celebrating Brian Humphries, CEO at Cognizant.
