EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System®) is a set of concepts and practices to help businesses improve their vision, focus, discipline, and accountability, with a healthier leadership style and better performance. Software companies can benefit from EOS principles in several ways, especially to better organize their communication and get information flowing upwards and downwards.
Why do software companies need EOS? Too often, in software development, technology teams and software people get culturally disconnected from the business. Communication gaps and misunderstandings arise between the technology issues and bells and whistles that the software engineers think about all day, and what the business (and your customers) really need.
EOS for software companies can help bridge these gaps. Let’s look at what EOS means for software companies, and how Modularis can help you adapt EOS principles for your software business.
Why EOS Drives Value for Software Companies
EOS helps software company business leaders think in terms of structure. Software company CEOs are often visionary people who have tons of ideas, in rapid succession. But sometimes, that rapid-fire idea generation can drive software engineers crazy! Engineers don’t think that way: software teams tend to be process-driven and want to focus on one thing at a time.
When the software R&D team gets bombarded by too many different, competing ideas that the business says are all “high-priority,” that can cause frustration and misalignment. Sometimes the software people start to feel indifferent to the needs of the business, or they shift into high gear and try to do everything at once – which can make it hard to keep track of details, and easy to burn people out.
EOS can help your software company stay on target and focus on the business impact of big challenges and goals, known as “rocks” in EOS parlance. These “rocks” are big, business-centric problems that take time and coordination to solve.
For example, a rock could be: “Increase revenue by 10% next quarter.” To make that happen, multiple departments within the software company have to coordinate their efforts. Part of that “rock” belongs to the software engineering team. When the software engineering team is given a goal to “increase revenue by 5%,” they can take a step back and look at software development from a revenue-centric perspective:
- How can the existing software product be improved to drive more revenue? What are opportunities to add new features to charge a few more dollars per month to existing customers?
- How should we decide when (or whether) to build a new software product?
- What are we hearing from customers about what the market wants, and how can we stay competitive with our innovation?
Using an EOS approach with your software R&D team can help your technology talent think in business terms. EOS can help you build better-engineered software products and drive growth and ROI.
Combining EOS with Scrum for Software Development
EOS concepts can work in parallel with Scrum, to help improve communication, collaboration, alignment, and accountability between the software R&D team and the rest of the company. In software engineering, Scrum is the most accepted communication process, but it has some useful overlaps with EOS. EOS can help software projects stay on time and on budget, and eliminate chaos – while putting the needs of the business first.
When you assign an EOS “rock” to the software team, they will typically break down that rock into the language of Scrum. They’ll describe the problem in terms of “epics” and “user stories.” They’ll break the project into bite-sized chunks of tasks that can be accomplished in 1-2 weeks and describe what the system needs to do to help the epic be achieved.
In EOS lingo, “issues” can be problems or new feature requests. Some issues are small enough to be solved immediately, but others need more time and planning. The leadership group needs to discuss each week to evaluate which issues are high priority. Some issues might get elevated to “rock” status.
In the EOS process for software development, there are a few different roles: starting with “Visionary” and “Integrator.” The Visionary is usually the CEO, owner, founder, or chairman who helps introduce ideas; the Integrator is often the company president, general manager, or COO.
With EOS for software, business leaders need to add issues to the features list. The Integrator then takes all those ideas and provides structure to them: the CTO might need to help clarify and add structure: “I love this idea, but this part should come first, and this part should come next.” EOS helps the software R&D team create a pipeline of work that’s well organized based on that cadence. The pipeline connects to Scrum, which is a pipeline of to-dos that need to be done in the software engineering world.
EOS and Scrum connect to help the flow of information downward (from the CEO to the software team) and upward (from the software team to the CEO and leadership team). With EOS and Scrum, all teams in the organization have to report relevant stats to the Visionary and Integrator so they can see the health of the business just by looking at a dashboard. It promotes better communication and ongoing transparency. And that can help your company avoid the biggest risks and hidden costs of software development.
How EOS Can Shift the Culture of Your Software Company
The software industry is notorious for going over budget and exceeding time estimates. 70% of large software development projects fail, and that’s often because engineers are learning on the fly, and have to spend the first six months of a project learning how to do it. Adopting EOS for software development helps address a lot of these issues. EOS gives your software R&D team better visibility into the company’s vision and the project’s business goals.
With EOS, your software team should have a clearer understanding of:
- What purpose we are trying to achieve
- How to get everyone on the same page
- How to have accountability for every part of the project
- How to have a shared sense of vision and values
- Which problems to prioritize to achieve the “rock”
Adopting EOS principles of focus, discipline, and accountability can ultimately help transform a software company’s culture. Instead of a company that’s too siloed, with every team or department looking out for its own agenda, EOS can instill better communication and create a more unified team aligned around a common purpose and shared values.
What’s at the root of the cultural disconnect between software teams and business leaders? Too often, software engineers don’t know what the market wants or what customers want; instead, they get excited about new technology, learning new coding languages, and doing their own thing. Those efforts don’t always map back to business goals or drive business results. Sometimes software engineers have a mercenary mindset, where they know their skills are in demand, and if a project fails, they can just go find another lucrative gig.
EOS can strengthen the connection between engineers and the business. When you can show your software team the larger business impact of the technology problems they’re solving, that can help foster a greater sense of ownership and commitment. Engineers start thinking more about purpose instead of just the paycheck. At its best, EOS helps drive engagement and better retention of CTOs and software engineers.
How EOS Connects with Modularis and PlatformPlus®
EOS combined with Scrum also helps software teams reduce the amount of labor required to complete a project. This makes EOS a great complement for partnering with Modularis and PlatformPlus®.
With PlatformPlus®, software companies can reduce the amount of labor needed to develop software products. Our low-code platform-as-a-service helps reduce coding time by 80%. By removing 75-80% of the effort involved in building a platform, PlatformPlus® and EOS can enable more efficient communication and develop software products more effectively.
PlatformPlus® also de-risks the project by taking care of the “plumbing” of your software product. This lets your software R&D team focus on innovating, delivering great features, and creating value for customers. PlatformPlus® also gives you ongoing advisory support, so you can tap into the expertise of our experienced engineers and software architects.
Working with Modularis and PlatformPlus® helps you bring the concepts of EOS to life in your software company. We’ll help your team take a step back and look at the business impact of software development: What do your customers need, what does the market need, and how can you build successful software products in a way that reduces risk and maximizes ROI?
At Modularis, we’re business-minded engineers, not developers. We’ve got the skills for heavy-lift engineering projects, but we always think in business terms. We’ll work with you to build successful software products that will be stable, scalable, profitable, and serviceable. EOS and Modularis can help your software team think in terms of not just technology, code, and bytes, but in terms of revenue, risk management, and value creation.
Bottom line: EOS is another way to accelerate software development. Modularis can help you adopt principles of EOS to get everyone on the same page, from the C-suite to the developers, and unite your company around common goals so you can take on the most heavy-lift “rocks.”
Innovate More Efficiently. Achieve Business Goals Faster!
Looking for more ways to accelerate growth at your company? Connect with CEO A.J. Singh for a ten-minute introduction to the Innovation Fraction. This one calculation can change the entire software development process for your business.