It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to implement reusability in your product development process.
But it did take rocket science, specifically the Falcon 9 rocket, to demonstrate just how successful and cost-cutting it could be.
If you’re unaware, the Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX, for the reliable and safe transport of people and cargo into Earth’s orbit and beyond.
Reusability allows SpaceX to reuse the most expensive parts of the rocket, which in turn, drives down the cost of space travel.
Yes. That’s right. Rockets made from reusable components.
And why not? After all, we don’t use single-use airplanes. Or one-way buses.
It took a lot of engineering to make the Falcon 9 capable of landing back on the ground (and if you haven’t seen it, oh my goodness is it cool!). But once they had it, it opened countless doors (hingeless doors ala Star Wars obviously) to all the things they could do.
Need a bigger rocket? Just strap three of them together and now you have the Falcon Heavy. Need to send astronauts and payload to the International Space Station? Swap out the nose and you have Dragon 1.
The point here is that SpaceX committed to a modular approach when building their orbital launch system. They started by designing one engine (one!). Then, they designed one booster with 9 of those engines. And from that one engine and one booster, SpaceX developed a platform that can be reconfigured, repurposed, and reused depending on their clients’ needs.
This enabled them to reduce the cost of orbital payload insertion by an order of magnitude AND de-risk and accelerate the entire process. Their modular, platform-centric approach maximized their return on the investment they made in each component or module. All the research, design, development, testing, and certification paid dividends each time that module was used and reused in new configurations (aka new applications).
Yet, while what SpaceX achieved is truly remarkable, the central tenet of their approach—building a modular platform composed of reusable components—isn’t new at all. In fact, the world’s major car manufacturers like Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, General Motors, Ford, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan have all developed (or licensed) their own platforms.
Each one developed a vertical platform to maximize component reuse. Quite simply, it’s their platforms that contain their core IP and enable them to bring new cars to market faster, cheaper, and with higher quality.
Case in point: before Carlos Ghosn became infamous for escaping Japan in a musical instrument case, he did something really amazing at Nissan…he leveraged reusability to turn a profit.
When Ghosn joined Nissan in 1999, the company:
- Was losing $1,000 on each car it sold
- Took 5 years to bring a new vehicle to market
- Placed very little emphasis on component sharing or reuse
- Offered 10 different engines across 20 similarly-sized vehicle models
Each vehicle in their portfolio needed its own specific technologies, tooling, and parts. Therefore, each product carried its own unique chunk of technical debt. So, Ghosn challenged his engineers to shift their mindset from being product-oriented, to platform-oriented.
Instead of building new vehicles on their own bespoke platforms, they designed and developed a single scalable platform that came in small, medium, and large sizes. They focused on parts and component sharing across the entire lineup, which enabled them to drop the total number of engines they had to build, install, service, and support from 10 to only 3.
Every investment they made in their platform, whether it was an engine, suspension-, braking-, or safety-subsystem, produced returns across their entire product line. R&D costs could be shared across the portfolio as well. Every investment was reused and produced compound returns. And they could bring a new vehicle to market in 2 years rather than 5, with higher quality than ever before.
This is the power of reusability—the power of a platform-centric mindset.
Extra 10% Yields Maximum Results
But as the title of this particular blog reveals, this modular, platform-centric approach used by both SpaceX and Nissan can be applied to your own software product development strategy. The power of reusability is the same. And by embracing this approach, you can also compound the returns on every investment you make in R&D.
What’s surprising is that all it really takes to adopt a platform-focused mindset, is about 10% extra effort. Just 10% more effort to design and build your own reusable platform, which ultimately yields a higher-quality product.
But instilling a platform-centric mindset across your business isn’t that simple. You need to work smarter – not harder, leverage the strengths of your entire team, and fill gaps you may have in your development process, technical leadership, architectural expertise, and technology.
PlatformPlus to the Rescue
Now in the software world, the term “platform” is thrown around willy-nilly to the point that it can seem almost meaningless. In a previous blog, I detailed the three approaches software companies can take when they want to adopt a platform-centric approach to product development. They can:
- Build their own platform
- Use open-source frameworks
- License a commercial platform
Any of these approaches will increase reusability, and that’s a good thing. I also recommended licensing a commercial platform from a technology partner because it not only provides you with a large set of reusable components, it also offloads your team from having to maintain and support those components yourself.
But this only gets you so far because what you’re licensing is a horizontal platform—one that isn’t specific to your industry or market vertical.
What you need to do is build your own vertical platform consisting of your own proprietary reusable components to assemble any number of new products you want to offer to the marketplace.
That thinking was the genesis of PlatformPlus. We designed a horizontal platform made specifically to help software companies de-risk and accelerate the creation of their own vertical platforms on top of it.
Think: Reusability Squared.
That’s the ‘Platform’ part. The ‘Plus’ part recognizes all that comes with making the transition from a traditional product-oriented approach to one that is platform-centric. This mindset generally exposes gaps in technical leadership, software architecture, and product design. Gaps you need to fill. That’s why PlatformPlus includes unlimited access to our executive leadership, experienced software architects, product designers, and heavy-lift engineers, all designed to help you and your team succeed.
The Power of Reusability
At the end of the day, if you want to create a new product, it’s imperative to remember that any investment in reusability must be taken seriously. Experience shows that it simply can’t withstand walls and silos—it thrives in organizations that embrace a concurrent engineering approach. Collaboration, lots of attention, and plenty of back-and-forth between all your departments is needed to ensure your efforts really pay off.
All of these examples of reusability are evident in the hardware manufacturing world, but many software companies have realized the power of this philosophy in their own businesses. After all, what good is it to write the same code over and over again, when with just a bit more thought, planning, and collaboration, you can build a reusable component that’s one and done? Think of how much faster you can launch new products when you can re-use components you’ve already built as part of other applications!
If this seems like it requires a lot of change…you’d be right! But take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself if you want to stick with the status quo in R&D for the rest of your life…or at least until you sell the company…