Software Business

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.

In business, driving value is a key strategy and typically starts at the top of an organization. In today’s digital age, driving software value is also an important, and often overlooked, key strategy. Executives, and the corporate board, need to expect the highest level of business value from the software the organization is developing, buying, and selling. In today’s digital transformation marketplace, it is imperative that organizations start driving business value from software development initiatives. For many years, the cost of software development challenged organizations with questions such as: How do we allocate software development costs? Should these costs be considered an overhead expense? Are we getting the most value possible for our investment? A fundamental problem has been built into these questions – the focus on cost. In almost every other part of the organization, maximizing profit or, in the case of a not-for-profit, maximizing the funds available, provides a clear focus with metrics to determine success or failure. In theory, simply aligning software spending with the maximizing profit goals should be sufficient to avoid any questions about value for money. Unfortunately, this alignment hasn’t turned out to be so simple, and the questions persist, particularly at the strategic or application portfolio level. In this book, Michael D.S. Harris describes how a software business value culture—one where all stakeholders, including technology and business—have a clear understanding of the goals and expected business value from software development. The book shows readers how they can transform software development from a cost or profit center to a business value center. Only a culture of software as a value center enables an organization to constantly maximize business value flow through software development. If your organization is starting to ask how it can change software from a cost-center to a value-center, this book is for you.

The expanding global market offers many opportunities for the software industry; however, many new software companies never realize their potential. They write some great code--but they can't address the "business" side of running a profitable enterprise. Many potentially great companies have fallen by the wayside because their founders didn't understand their market, didn't understand how to get the word out, or didn't understand the mechanics of the business.Building a Successful Software Business is a handbook for the new software entrepreneur and the old hand alike. If you're thinking of starting a company around a program you've written, this book will guide you toward success. If you're an old hand in the software industry, this book will help you sharpen your skills or will provide a refresher course.If you're thinking of building a company around some software you've developed, there's no better time than the present. Let this book start you on the way to success.Topics include: Marketing strategies and tactics Customer fulfillment, training, and support Getting your product out the door Using consultants effectively Understanding cash flow Includes a guide to other business resources.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Software Business, ICSOB 2021, which was held during December 2-3, 2021. The conference was originally planned to take place in Drammen, Norway, but changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The special theme of ICSOB 2021 was software sustainability. The 13 full papers and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions. They deal with a range of topics including software sustainability, Agile development, DevOps, software startups, prototyping, software ecosystems, crowdsourcing platforms, technical debts, and risk management.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Software Business, ICSOB 2017, held in Essen, Germany, in June 2017. The 11 full papers and 5 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: software startups and platform governance; software business development; software ecosystems and App stores.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Business, ICSOB 2016, held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in June 2016. Software business refers to commercial activities in and around the software industry aimed at generating income from the delivery of software products and services. The theme of the event was "Software as a New Way of Providing Cutting-edge Solutions". The 10 full and 5 short papers for ICSOB were selected from 38 submissions. The papers span a wide range of issues related to contemporary software business, ranging from strategic aspects to operational challenges. The strong presence of software ecosystem papers confirms the importance of this topic and influence on software business. In addition, a short abstract of the key note by Peter Lick and Hans-Bernd Kittlaus is also included.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Software Business, ICSOB 2019, held in Jyväskylä, Finland, in November 2019. On the occasion of its tenth anniversary the conference theme this year was “The First Decade and Beyond” and focused on the development during the past decade, addressing the future of software-intensive business as well as studies on new and emerging ideas. The 18 full papers and 10 short papers presented together with 3 invited talks, 6 emerging research papers and a tutorial were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: software ecosystems; management of software products; continual improvement and product development; impacts of digitalization; software business education; software startups and digital business.

Describes the decisions that led to the success of 16 software companies. The decisions are illustrated in detail, providing entrepreneurs with insights into what it takes to make a decision that can change the future of a company.