When it comes to building products, Agile and Waterfall just don’t cut it anymore.

It’s 2016.

Both of those things were popular in an era when talking to customers and getting feedback was hard. But today, there’s no excuse. Every team at your company should be talking to customers daily.

Your customers don’t operate in six-week release cycles.

They don’t think about weekly sprints.

They don’t want to hear “it’s on our roadmap for next quarter.”

Customer expectations have changed along with the rise of software-as-a-service and the on-demand economy.

And with so many options and competing products for your customers — do you honestly think customers are going to stick around until you fix that bug in your next release cycle in six weeks?

I wouldn’t stick around. And your customers won’t either. As a result, the way that we build our products and structure our product teams needs to change too.

This isn’t about politics, it’s about the tech bubble.

Yesterday, the people of Britain, (a small island off the coast of mainland Europe), my home, voted in a referendum to decide whether we should remain part of the European Union. The result was close:

• Leave – 17,410,742 – 51.9%
• Remain – 16,141,241 – 48.1%

We’re leaving the European Union.

How to Grow and Stay Agile – Top 6 Business Decisions

A guest blog post from Dirk Paessler, Paessler AG, serial attendee at Business of Software Conference. Dirk considers six key business decisions that built Paessler AG to 160 people without external financing over the past 20 years.

Business of Software Europe was great (it’s not just us that say it, our attendees rated it with an NPS of 93). One said attendee, Mike from CurationWall, put together this excellent infographic summarising the event. He’s also brought together his thoughts on the top three talks from the event from his perspective in a well written, long form blog post – seen here.

In a world where customer support is increasingly the difference between buy or no buy, stay or no stay, just about everyone loves to market themselves as ‘customer centric/driven/motivated/leading/delightors/dinosaurs/satisfyers/ninjas/hillbillies’.

A phrase I regularly hear is ‘we love to delight the customer’. But what does that mean? From a corporate point of view, it’s usually sales based – ‘we love to delight the customer’ = ‘we make people happy enough that they keep buying from us’. This counteracts the selfless act of delighting another human being – or, to remove the buzzword – unselfishly making another human happy for the sake of happiness.

With everyone apparently looking to ‘delight’ the customer, the companies that really mean it with true intentions still stand out from the pack. Amazon, Apple, and John Lewis (UK) are all examples of companies famed and loved for their customer service, a by product of which is customers come back again and again, or in the SaaS world… keep on subscribing.

I had a great experience that made me happy today. I wanted to share it quickly, because credit where it’s due and all that.

7 and a half minutes to make a talk we say? Easy! You say. Not so much, we say.

Get your idea heard on the Business of Software Stage. The BoS Lightning Talks 2016 are open for public application now.

Jeff Szczepanski, COO, Stack Exchange

In every successful technology businesses Jeff has worked in, the key challenge has been understanding how to scale technology and when to tackle the technical debt that inevitably accrues as a company runs ever faster and faster in pursuit of its business objectives. Jeff draws on his experience to help you understand what challenges emerge as a company moves from a Developer Centric environment to become more business focused.

How can you get the business people to have influence on a developer centric environment? How can you manage the challenges that marketing will present?! What principles can you apply to be aware of problems early? How do you trade Agile Practioners vs Architectural Astronauts in a fast growing business? What are the technical debt trade-offs, what problems can you buy yourself out of? What problems will kill you if you don’t move now?

Slides, Video, AMA & Transcript below

Gail delivered a talk for the ages at BoS USA 2012 with the “Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death”.

At the tenth Business of Software USA, she returns to reflect on her time at Constant Contact with the talk “Lessons Learned in 17 years Building and Exiting a SaaS Business”. As someone who has been through growing a software company before – her experience is invaluable.

Business of Software Europe 2016 was last week. Missed it? You missed out.

We have saved and shared some of the best notes, writeups and interviews with participants so you can get a little bit of the action. We will put the slides and videos of talks up in due course. Leave us your email address and we will let you know when they are live.

One of Gail Goodman’s legacies to the software industry has been proving you can build a profitable business in the SMB space. Today, SME/SMBs are a recognised and attractive market segment for software companies and significant amounts of venture funding is available to go after it.

Beyond this, Gail delivered a talk for the ages at BoS USA 2012 with the “Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death”. At the tenth Business of Software USA, she returns to reflect on her time at Constant Contact with the talk “Lessons Learned in 17 years Building and Exiting a SaaS Business”.

Before the conference, you have the opportunity to ask Gail anything on growing great businesses. As someone who has been through growing a software company before – her experience is invaluable and available to you during the one hour hangout.

And then the Business of Software Europe (#BoS2016) event was over.

So I went out into the Dublin night and came across an orchestra of Ukulele players jammed into the tiny upstairs room of a bar, singing unbelievable harmonies while furiously strumming on their little guitars. Off the scale brilliance.

And that’s what I think about BoS…

Off the scale brilliance.

It is a good job someone in the family has communication skills…

This is Violet being interviewed last week at Business of Software Conference Europe in Ireland by the rather wonderful Bill Thompson and Gareth Mitchell from the BBC’s Click programme. The producer, Ania Lichtarowicz is holding the mic and set everything up.

You can listen to her here and the final programme here. It features some people that are well known to regular BoS Conference attendees – Betsy Weber (Techsmith), Clarke Ching (Royal London), Iris Lapinski (Apps for Good), Joan Mulvihill (Irish Internet Association) and John McEvoy (Irish Men’s Sheds Association).

Rory Sutherland spoke at BoS Europe and recommended the following reading list for people interested in neuroscience and the Business of Software.

This is a guest blog post by Gareth Marlow, BoS speaker and attendee.

In “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Steven Covey speaks of Sharpening the Saw.

As he tells it:-

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.
“What are you doing?” you ask.
“Can’t you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”
“You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?”
“Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.”
“Well why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”
“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”

Nice piece in Irish Tech News, an interview with Peter Coppinger, speaking next week at Business of Software Conference Europe on three talks that helped shape his company.

What areas of the brain respond to different words?

Amazing.

This study maps brain activity amongst subjects listening to stories. The electrical activity in the brain is mapped and shows that different locations in the brain are stimulated by different words. Perhaps not surprisingly, some words that relate to, for example, colour, map to areas of the brain near the parts of the brain that process vision.

Single words, can activate multiple regions. ‘Top’, for example, stimulates parts of the brain associated with – appearances, numbers and measurements, buildings and places.

Offering people choices when they have no choices

I was talking to the always entertaining and insightful Rory Sutherland today about his forthcoming talk at Business of Software Europe. He’s talking about how we can use technology to hack the human consciousness and he came up with this brilliant insight about offering people choices even when there are no choices.

He was talking about scheduled operations in the NHS, the UK’s National Health Service, free at the point of delivery but not always the slickest when it comes to keeping ‘customers’ happy. (Though having taken one of our team members to A&E last week when she tripped over on the way to work, cut her head open, broke her wrist and elbow, I was reminded that they are an amazing organisation).

When you are scheduled to have, for example, a hip replacement, you will wait some time before getting a call to say something along the lines of,

“Your operation is scheduled for 10.30 am on 21st May.”

You have no choice, you  have to be there or get rescheduled to a later date.

Here’s another approach…