Fast, faster, fastest. When it comes to technology companies’ goals for software engineering, speedy time-to-market is on many leaders’ short lists. One out of four identified scaling products swiftly from ideation to revenue as a top objective in our research.
Yet we still observe too many companies that base their strategies for moving quickly on hiring more sales associates or call-center staff. Increased speed to market, however, isn’t rooted in additional resources. It requires a broader view that puts in place the basic building blocks of software engineering: processes, talent and a solid foundation.
Getting to Market Quickly: Real-World Results
By embracing new methodologies like DevOps and Agile and organizing themselves into communities, companies can deliver results every few weeks instead of taking three to six months. The problem is that despite its name, software engineering isn’t a marginal technology play or an add-on. It’s about rethinking the business.
Most companies are still in the planning or pilot stages for software-development improvement initiatives. In our survey, only 25% of companies have rolled out large-scale implementations or are in the process of doing so.
Those that have, however, are getting products and services to market more quickly. For example, we partnered with a global marketing communications agency that taps into enviable pools of data to execute digital campaigns for its clients. Yet prepping new accounts for the automated campaigns was time consuming. Integrating data from disparate sources often dragged on for nine months.