"But if the business is chaotic, the software will never catch up."
In my fairly long but admittedly somewhat limited experience (I've been in the internal IT organization of an insurance/financial services company in several roles for about 35 years) this is the ultimate problem faced by all internal IT organizations. There should be no 'if' in this statement. From the IT organization's viewpoint, business is always chaotic. Also, in my experience as a consumer of package software, even software development companies don't appear to run their business under your idealized assumptions about change control and product development.
Also, again from the perspective of somebody who has been in the trenches of "slap our logo on generic software" projects, that's pretty much a fantasy. The fundamental problem is that every piece of software is designed with specific use cases (i.e. sales pitches) in mind, and it is highly unlikely that those use cases will align with all the existing business processes of a company. Sometimes this is just a matter of executive ego or 'we always did it this way' but you are either going to have to customize the software or you are going to have to change the business process flow to accommodate the way the software functions, and either approach generates its own set of problems.
"And while I know nothing about Volkswagen’s business processes, I would bet—based on their problems with software—that those processes are more chaotic than at other auto firms."
I was questioning something like this before I got to this sentence. First, are their software problems bigger than others? How does one measure that? Is Microsoft's software process chaotic? If not, did it used to be and at what point did they get beyond that? Is Tesla's car making more chaotic than other car companies? If so, what does that tell us about SpaceX's processes? My last thought was that it's unlikely you become one of the two biggest auto manufacturers with chaotic car building processes.
Here's a great tell that your observations are correct: the person identified as CTO of Cariad in the WSJ article has a publicly accessible LinkedIn profile. Hers is not the resume of a software person.
Interesting tale, for it was VW the first to learn to their surprise after reunification in the Trabant car plant in the East, that everything was made in-house down to the nuts and bolts, with the result that the finished product was worth less than what had gone into making it. Stick to what you know seems best policy.
"But if the business is chaotic, the software will never catch up."
In my fairly long but admittedly somewhat limited experience (I've been in the internal IT organization of an insurance/financial services company in several roles for about 35 years) this is the ultimate problem faced by all internal IT organizations. There should be no 'if' in this statement. From the IT organization's viewpoint, business is always chaotic. Also, in my experience as a consumer of package software, even software development companies don't appear to run their business under your idealized assumptions about change control and product development.
Also, again from the perspective of somebody who has been in the trenches of "slap our logo on generic software" projects, that's pretty much a fantasy. The fundamental problem is that every piece of software is designed with specific use cases (i.e. sales pitches) in mind, and it is highly unlikely that those use cases will align with all the existing business processes of a company. Sometimes this is just a matter of executive ego or 'we always did it this way' but you are either going to have to customize the software or you are going to have to change the business process flow to accommodate the way the software functions, and either approach generates its own set of problems.
"And while I know nothing about Volkswagen’s business processes, I would bet—based on their problems with software—that those processes are more chaotic than at other auto firms."
I was questioning something like this before I got to this sentence. First, are their software problems bigger than others? How does one measure that? Is Microsoft's software process chaotic? If not, did it used to be and at what point did they get beyond that? Is Tesla's car making more chaotic than other car companies? If so, what does that tell us about SpaceX's processes? My last thought was that it's unlikely you become one of the two biggest auto manufacturers with chaotic car building processes.
Here's a great tell that your observations are correct: the person identified as CTO of Cariad in the WSJ article has a publicly accessible LinkedIn profile. Hers is not the resume of a software person.
The exception is JPM, who is well regarded as a formidable technology company even by other tech companies.
Interesting tale, for it was VW the first to learn to their surprise after reunification in the Trabant car plant in the East, that everything was made in-house down to the nuts and bolts, with the result that the finished product was worth less than what had gone into making it. Stick to what you know seems best policy.
And GM is revamping their car IT infrastructure to collect more user data. (They will rely on Google to build it.) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-ford-thinks-gm-is-wrong-to-drop-apple-carplay-from-future-models/ar-AA1b9icM
One of Tesla's advantage during the chip shortage was being able to rewrite software to be able to use less powerful chips that were more available.