Warm welcome to Carlos!

We are very happy and proud to be able to inform you all that we have hired Carlos Prieto Cañal, our new Senior Solution Architect. Today is the first day of Carlos at Innoveo!

Carlos has a Master Degree in Computer Engineering of the University of Oviedo/Spain, with a Master Thesis pending in Artificial Intelligence. One of his publication:
Hybridizing a Genetic Algorithm with Local Search and Heuristic Seeding

Carlos is also a SUN Certified Java Programmer 6, and has a Master in J2EE Applications development from SUN.

He was working for CSC (Gijon, Spain) in the last 4 years, where he could, among others, acquire knowledge of the Insurance market while he was involved in an international project developed for a major Insurance company based in Swindon/UK during 2 years.

Carlos (middle right of the picture) at our recent Innoveo X’Mas Event 2010 (I will come back to that ;) with Andrea, Nestor, Laurent and Cédric.

Quite a long time that we haven’t got colleagues from Spain in our Team, so it’s a great pleasure to increase also our “internationality” again!

cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

Innoveo 3rd anniversary!

Yes, already 3 years that we have founded Innoveo!

That was such a dense period, with so many experiences, wow.

As we are now used to, we have celebrated this special day with a good lunch near Zurich. Very good time indeed :-)

Warm thanks to the whole Innoveo team for making all this possible!

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

IMPORTANT: Want a job at Innoveo?

We are searching for an excellent and motivated Software Engineer, with a focus on Java and Web Development, to support us in the development of our standard Software product -Innoveo Skye- at our office in Zurich, Switzerland. Some more information:

  • Web technology: (X)HTML, CSS, AJAX, JSF, jQuery
  • Basis technology: J2EE, Spring, XML & SOAP, Portal
  • Development: Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, Subversion, Maven, Tomcat, TeamCity, TDD, BDD, Scrum/XP
  • Languages: English and German

More information in this pdf (in German).

Do not hesitate to contact me if you need more information. And to spread the news!

Thanks in advance ;-)

Cross-posted on the Innoveo blog.

Lean, Agile & Scrum conference in Zurich

As you may know, Oli (our VP Product at Innoveo) and myself participated last week to the 2nd “Lean, Agile & Scrum” Conference in Zurich, also called LAS 2010.

The topic this year: From the Scrum project to lean enterprise.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Summary

  • For me the clear highlight of the day was the presentation of Mary Poppendieck (she has written the first book about Lean development in the Software industry with her husband) – The tyranny of “The Plan” (presentation here). She explained almost all principles and bases that led to the creation of the Scrum methodology. Very convincing ;-)
  • I’ve heard now for three times quite in a row that experienced companies using Scrum are implementing very strictly the Scrum frame (no adaptation and/or tinkering), but are very careful with other Scrum best practices and lessons learnt that cannot be always replicated.
  • Again, we have heard very often how far it is absolutely central to have the software engineering and automatization parts under control by introducing such kind of agile approach. What they call “software craftsmanship”.
  • All were also confirming how long it takes to transform deeply a company ;-)
  • Some speakers were explaining how far they are still struggling with Agile Software Architecture. Seems that maturity in this field is coming quite at the end of the transformation process.
  • Heard also that Scrum doesn’t fit well to Maintenance & Support, and that Kanban is more accurate for organizing these activities (but not enough experience yet to confirm Kanban in this field).
  • Anecdote: the CTO of bbv (about 110 developers using Scrum since 5 years) said that it is not so easy to spread this kind of agile approach, as “Swiss managers like very much to command & control, which is absolutely against the aim of agile approach”. Not sure that this is so particular to Switzerland actually :-)

Mary Poppendieck

The thinking tool called Agile

Henrik Kniberg, presentation

The illusion of a “good tool”, Don’t blame the tool

Good tools are helping to:

  • visualize the workflow
  • limit work in progress
  • focus on quality
  • prioritize
  • empower
  • support continuous improvements

Using the wrong tool vs. using the tool wrong (both have nothing to do with the tool itself)

The aim of going agile has to be linked with the vision and values of the company => be careful to solve the right problem, i.e. the root causes and not symptoms

Agile is simple but hard!

Transforming BBV into an agile company

Marcel Bauman, presentation

Why changing to agile?

  • business requirements are changing a lot, customers are asking for very short projects where you can show step-by-step results, reqs are changing during the projects
  • fun for people and developers
  • young people are coming more and more on the market with agile teaching

Why Scrum?

  • standard method, most used in Europe

Bbv favors (manifesto):

  • individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • working software over comprehensive documentation
  • customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • responding to a change over following a plan

Scrum works only with:

  • source mgt, continuous integration, wiki, test env
  • need a lot of virtual machines and processing power
  • automate everything that can be automated
  • remote access (VPN) for all employees
  • XP as a base! => 40% of developers don’t like pair programming

HR:

  • no reporting on individual level, just project-level
  • incentive on team-level
  • pair programming interviews

The tyranny of “The Plan”

Mary Poppendieck, presentation

Key Success Factors for successful projects:

  • teamwork
  • deeply experienced people
  • focus on key constraint
  • decoupling
  • cash-flow thinking

In other words:

  • design the system to meet the constraints; do not derive constraints from the design
  • break dependencies
  • manage the workflow

Schedules based on experience are reliable. Schedules summed up from task breakdowns are guesses, hypothesis about the future.

Optimize Throughput, not utilization (coming from Queuing theory)!

  • minimize the number of things in process
  • minimize the size of things in process

Level the workload:

  • manage workflow, not tasks
  • establish a regular cadence

Limit work to capacity

  • timebox, don’t scopebox
  • pull, don’t push

Cross-posted on the Innoveo blog.

Participating to the first TEDx in Alsace

TEDx = independently organized TED event

It’s the first time that a TEDx event is organized in the region where I’m living. So the first TEDxAlsace will be organized in Mulhouse/Alsace/France on coming October 2 by Salah, a “very nice guy” I know since a while. The general topic will be “visions of the future”.

Quite a good program and interesting speakers planned.

About TEDx

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event.
The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

My interview (yeah, in French :-)

1. Pourriez vous vous présentez ? ( professions, secteur, passions, projets, parcours,…)

Didier, 38 ans, marié, un garçon de 8 ans, entrepreneur.

Je vis dans un petit village non loin de Mulhouse, mais je travaille à Zürich en Suisse, où j’ai cofondé mon entreprise, Innoveo, en 2007, après un très enrichissant processus de “spin-out”. Nous fournissons des solutions logicielles aux groupes d’assurance dans le domaine de la distribution. Notre vision est d’aider le business à implémenter leur stratégie d’innovation et de développement à l’aide de solutions technologiques adaptées, tout en injectant du “sens” dans notre travail. L’approche dite “Agile” nous intéresse énormément et nous nous trouvons dans un processus de transformation profonde depuis quelques mois, basée sur Scrum. Je suis également membre du Conseil d’Administration de Boomerang depuis plus de 12 ans. Je possède une double formation d’ingénieur en informatique (ENSISA) et de Management d’entreprise (MBA à l’EMLYON).

Mes passions se retrouvent dans mon blog (dans le désordre): l’entrepreneuriat, le leadership, les industries du logiciel et de l’assurance, Innoveo, la musique, la photo, la dégustation de vins. Et pour une petite île perdue aux Antilles, exactement à la frontière entre l’océan Atlantique et la mer des Caraïbes … Saint Barth ;-)

2. Est ce que vous connaissiez les événements TED et TEDx avant de s’inscrire au TEDxAlsace?

J’ai la chance de connaître deux personnes qui ont déjà participé au TED, Jeff Clavier et Loïc Le Meur, tous deux très connus dans notre petit monde de “geeks”. J’ai pu rencontrer Jeff et Loïc grâce à Marc Goldberg, mon ami investisseur chez Bryan Garnier et grand connaisseur de la “scène” technologique européenne.

Je connais donc le concept … et Salah, organisateur de TEDxAlsace. Le mélange des deux ne peut qu’être détonnant!

3. Quelles sont vos motivations et attentes par rapport au TEDxAlsace?

Simplement écouter et apprendre, faire de belles rencontres.

4. Si vous avez une question à poser à l’un des speakers de TEDxAlsace, qui serait le speaker? et quelle serait la question ?

Tout d’abord, merci à tous de participer et de nous faire partager votre expérience!

Une simple question à tous: un lien vers un post, un site, un article qui vous a marqué ces derniers mois.

5. Quelle question nous avons oublié de vous posez ? Et quelle serait la réponse ?

Quelle est l’entreprise et l’entrepreneur qui vous inspirent en ce moment?

Entreprise: Netflix, entreprise américaine de plus de 2000 employés mais qui possède une culture d’entreprise très particulière et innovante. Elle cherche par exemple à minimiser ses règles internes au fur et à mesure de son développement. Leur présentation de leur culture d’entreprise est publiée sur SlideShare (en anglais).

Entrepreneur: Jean-Claude Biver, Directeur Général des montres Hublot. Entrepreneur en série puisque qu’il repris avec succès 3 marques de montres de luxe dans sa carrière: Omega, Blancpain et Hublot. Excusez du peu ;-) Quelle énergie, quelle stratégie, et quelle approche marketing.

6. Vos liens internet : (Twitter, Site internet, blog, Facebook…)

Blog:                http://didierbeck.com (depuis mars 2004)

Photos/vidéos:  http://visuals.didierbeck.com

Facebook:        http://www.facebook.com/didier.beck

Twitter:             http://twitter.com/didierbeck (depuis juillet 2007)

Xing:                https://www.xing.com/profile/Didier_Beck

LinkedIn:          http://www.linkedin.com/in/didierbeck

Innoveo:           http://innoveo.com

Boomerang:     http://boomerangpharma.com

Insurance Distribution challenges

via Celent

Michel Michellod from Celent, an international strategy consultancy focused on the financial industry, has just posted a very interesting article which is very “aligned” with how we understand ourselves the current and coming insurance front-end challenges.

Some interesting strategic challenges highlighted in the post:

The direct channel requires an appropriate front end. […] This goal can be best achieved through the implementation of open and flexible front end systems facilitating interactions with potential customers, integrating modern communication tools for call center officers and allowing a high level of reactivity in terms of product, pricing and discount changes.

Communication with aggregators is key. […]  The second alternative consists in directing shoppers automatically onto the insurance online platform to perform the last step of the buying process (the effective purchase of the insurance product and its payment). This alternative requires an instantaneous transmission of customer and quote data by aggregators to insurers.

Insurers need to improve integration of affinity and bank channels. […] Insurers need to implement relevant portals allowing management and process of sophisticated insurance products.

Use brokers and agents in specific customer segments. […] I recommend insurers to implement sophisticated portals with rich functionality to provide point of differentiation.

Responding to multi-channel management. […] I believe insurers should prioritize sophisticated portals providing a single view of the customer based on service oriented architecture (SOA) with high level of automation.

As the insurance distribution landscape is changing fast and drastically, I expect this topic to be part of the European insurer’s top priorities in the coming years.

At Innoveo, we are exactly acting in this field and bringing a standard software product on the market – Innoveo Skye®– which allows insurance companies (life, non-life, health) to find an efficient, technology-proven and business-oriented answer to the different challenges raised by Celent.

Disclaimer: we were nominated by Celent as “Model Carrier” in 2007 for our effective usage of technology. See the report here.

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

ro:mu:s event at the lake Zug

Some colleagues from Innoveo and I were invited yesterday by our colleagues, friends and partners from the ro:mu:s company, which is bringing very high-valued and professional consulting in the fields of organization, project management and business advisory.

Their yearly event took place at the lake Zug, a absolutely fantastic place, specially with the cuper weather we had yesterday! We were on a boat during about 3 hours, making a slow trip all around the lake, with all these beautiful landscapes. And with some good food and wines. So an excellent evening!

Warm thanks guys for the invitation and friendly organization! (and thanks to Cédric for the pictures ;-)


As you see, I’m always well-positioned when it’s a matter of food ;-)

Cross-posted on the Innoveo blog

Lessons Learned from Dropbox

I am a “happy user” of Dropbox as early adopter since 2008. We are also using Dropbox intensively at Innoveo since 2009. A really cool service and tool when you have to deal with different computers (notebook, netbook, iPhone for me). If you don’t know Dropbox, you should have a try!

Dropbox is a very young company and tool. Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, has published a “worth-a-read” presentation about some Lessons Learnt they have done. No rocket science, a lot of common sense, but as usual, “everything is in the implementation” ;-)

Some data about Dropbox /

  • founded in 2007, launched in 2008
  • 1 million users 7 months after launch
  • Sept 2008: 100’000 registered users, Jan 2010 (15 months): 4 million users
  • Monthly growth: 15-20%

Some slides

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog