How can any software developer become an Innovator? Is it possible that innovations exist in any software company?

Software development in small and middle size companies can be encouraged in the same manner as in big companies. The effort and the time spent surely must be scaled, but the general principle which should bring the innovation culture into the teams can be copied.

The target can be that after introduction of innovation process following sentences shouldn’t be heard:

“We are here only to do our job and that is all…”

“We are not supposed to give suggestions.” 

“I can have ideas, but no one will care about it.”

“I don’t know what to do with new idea and how will care about it.”

To encourage new ideas, the process must be build and it doesn’t have to be complex. Let’s start with answering first question that can arise:

“Can software developers have ideas?”

Well, everyone can, and the ability to have new ideas is really close to everyday work of any developer. Let’s just say that any savings in development, planning, testing process is a worthful idea.

“What could be the suggestion in software industry?”

Many developers do many small improvements without recognizing that it was an idea that made some savings to the company. Some examples can be:

• new testing tool which provides more valuable information in shorter time,
• script for making the working environment or
• the new mechanism that makes your development process faster or more efficient.

“Aren’t the new ideas part of our everyday job already?”

To make this visible, whole organization must be prepared for taking care of such ideas, specially lower and middle management which should recognize and evaluate such ideas.

This process will add value to any organization, it will give:

• savings of time = money
• idea-makers will be recognized
• improvement in working environment
• new ideas will be encouraged
• this will prepare ground for other ideas
• knowledge about innovators or creatives in the organization

In short, introducing of innovation process will give additional benefit through the savings of money, but also in increasing the culture inside the organization and preparing it for next step which should follow – radical ideas that will come from developers.

This post is just the start of the series of posts related to the topic of innovation in software development companies…

(picture: I take the picture last year in Germany – this is the detail from the bag)