Agility for IoT Solutions
Speed to market is a critical success factor of IoT solutions
Speed and quality are two key focus points in IoT (Internet of Things) solutions. The traditional view is that speed and quality are the competing aspects of product development; therefore, solutions used take much longer than the current solutions.
However, in this economic climate, leading intrapreneurs in large business organisations and entrepreneurs for the startup companies changed the norm with a disruptive principle of MVP for competitive advantage.
This perception of the faster the product development, the less quality it may have is still pervasive. However, in this economic climate, speed is as important as the quality, if not more important.
The driving cause is that consumers want products or services faster than before. Therefore, business organizations are under tremendous pressure to serve their customers due to ever-growing consumer demands.
IoT solutions are usually created with utmost urgency due to their nature and the high expectations of the stakeholders. The product or service owners are under constant pressure to take their products and services to the market to stay competitive on the market. Consequently, this also puts a lot of pressure on the IoT solution architects and designers.
IoT devices require frequent updates for their software components, including firmware updates, also known as microcode, owing to increasing security concerns for vulnerable IoT devices. As we can see from the security literature, the intelligence level of hackers is growing.
Because of the agile trends in the industry and the focus to address consumer demands, there is an ongoing need to deploy agile methods when producing IoT solutions. Agile approaches became the norm in IT environments, especially when creating IoT solutions and an IoT ecosystem in large organizations.
Agile also became popular in the IoT manufacturing industry. There is a practice called “Agile Manufacturing” with tools and processes of the Agile approach designed for manufacturing IoT devices. The aim of this practice is rapidly respond to customers, the market, and desired innovations.
As IoT solution architects, we need to take part in this agile approach for our IoT solutions. We are expected to provide quick architectural decisions and develop fast solution designs to meet the demands of the business.
We have little time to analyze and make decisions at the macro level. This time constraint leaves no or minimal margin for mistakes. Therefore, we need to know the security, availability, performance, and cost implications by heart.
In this case, to produce solutions in agility, substantial experience, and in-depth knowledge matter for the IoT solution architects.
This prior knowledge can prepare the IoT solution architects to meet these agility demands effectively as described in my recent book titled “A Practical Guide for IoT Solution Architects”.
How can we speed up the development of IoT solutions?
How can we produce hardware, software, and combinations that are ready to market and serve the clients in agility?
Also, how can we maintain operational quality while creating agility?
The quick answer to these questions is to accelerate the solutions using established, Agile solution methods.
Using Agile methods is both the norm and the reality for IoT manufacturers, developers, and service providers. The project management discipline adapted to Agile very quickly; therefore, it is pervasive to see multiple Agile projects in many organizations.
Not only the project managers but also the technical professionals are affected by agility trends in many organizations.
Therefore, as solution architects and designers, we need to leverage the agility and deploy accelerated techniques adhering to the principles of the Agile methods such as progressing iteratively, experimenting in small chunks, focusing on the minimum viable product (MVP) principle, and applying lessons learned to the next iterations quickly.
The approach I attempt to describe in this article is commonly touted by entrepreneurs as fail fast and fail cheaply. The failure is a misnomer in this context or paradoxical as the lessons learned from these rapid experiments can lead to success by speeding up the delivery. This is an ideal approach for frenetic IoT solutions.
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