Dr. Dominic Lindner, Autor bei agile Companies

digitalization 21. March 2021

Current studies on digital business models

A business model is a concept of entrepreneurial activity and describes the benefits and earnings of a company. Digitization in particular shows numerous opportunities for new business models. I would therefore like to present two studies in the following and thus underpin the current status somewhat. I examined these studies in the course of my research. Study 1: Müller et al. 2016 The first study was by Müller et al. (2016) carried out. On the basis of a survey of over 60 companies, the authors found that new business models in particular with the help of technology require high investment costs and are therefore still rather hesitant to be implemented. According to the study participants, such investments in digital business models are much more difficult to approve, evaluate and justify compared to traditional investments and are generally considered to be riskier. In addition to the costs (50%), the following aspects…

Digital change 21. March 2021

Bad software leads to shadow IT during Corona

Corona forces us into the home office and the fight begins: VPN, Citrix and three logins! Now comes an error message! What shoud that? Call IT support: No success! Unfortunately, this exaggerated situation is often not an isolated incident! Companies have a poor IT infrastructure. The consequence is that employees cannot work meaningfully and teams acquire private infrastructure. This is called shadow IT and has experienced another boom since Corona! Shadow IT The term shadow IT describes IT systems that are used in the specialist departments or individual employees of a company in addition to the official IT infrastructure and without the knowledge of the IT department. According to a survey by Censuswide on behalf of McAfee 500 IT managers and over 250 employees in companies in Germany were surveyed. Over half of the managers surveyed state that shadow IT exists in the company. Almost 40% of employees also admit…

Cloud computing 21. March 2021

How reliable is the data availability in the cloud?

For me, cloud computing is defined as the use of IT infrastructure to make IT resources available flexibly via the Internet. In the meantime, more and more companies are using the option of storing data on the Internet using dynamic resources (cloud). According to a study by the Bitkom (Cloud Monitor) 70% of the 500 companies surveyed already use cloud applications today. Most common use case: storage of data and files A common use case is the storage of data on the cloud, whereby data protection and data availability play a special role. In particular, according to the study, despite the concerns, more and more secret and even sensitive data is being stored in the cloud. The types of data are: Non-critical information (81%), Data worth protecting (57%) and Secret information (33%). The survey data show that companies are increasingly storing more data in the cloud and also significantly more…

Work 4.0 21. March 2021

When companies no longer want to work – work avoidance domino effect

I have a few consultations every week which enables practitioners and students to interact with me. I then pack a lot of the contents of the office hours into blog articles. This article is also the origin of the telephone consultation hours. I have received numerous calls from Scrum masters and project leaders as well as change managers since March 2020 – the topic was the change in work since the lockdown caused by COVID-19. Virtual work forces companies to make numerous changes and, due to falling sales, companies are primarily obliged to deliver and to bring products / services to customers quickly. There is no longer any time for long voting channels and long discussions. Companies need to act now. I work and nobody participates! Unfortunately, I hear the sentence from the headline very often. The employees or managers want to implement projects and customer requests quickly. However, it…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

When management becomes a bottleneck and what the alternative is

A bottleneck is a weak point in business management, which is loud Wikipedia “has the highest utilization in the entire process chain in a period of time and thus inhibits the workflow.” Let’s imagine a real bottle from which we pour water into a glass. The outlet speed of the bottle is determined by the narrowest point, i.e. the bottle neck. The narrower the neck of the bottle, the less water gets into our glass. This metaphor has also established itself in business administration. A bottleneck can often be recognized by the queue, which is limited by it, for example the water in the bottle. In business administration, different work processes often flow together in a bottleneck and are checked, for example, or waiting for decisions. If the bottleneck is too slow, the processes jam and there are waiting times. But what does a bottleneck have to do with the…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

Finding a topic, focusing and narrowing down theses:: The lighthouse binoculars metaphor

The time has come: The thesis begins and the topic is halfway there and you start reading numerous books and papers. “Wow is all that interested and then I should investigate this aspect and this aspect too, and yes, that too is very exciting”. The end result is that you become less specific and in the end despair of the complexity of the many aspects in the thesis. The thesis is in danger of getting a bad grade or even having to be repeated. That is why the credo of a thesis is: My tip: Find a clear aspect with a question and examine it deeply and comprehensibly. In this article, I will use the metaphor of a landscape and binoculars to show you how to narrow down a topic for a thesis in a meaningful way and stay focused. I also give specific examples of how you can transfer…

digitalization 21. March 2021

Current studies on agility

Agility is the ability of the information function of a company to make preparations in order to react very quickly to changing capacity requirements and changed functional requirements, if possible in real time, and to be able to use the possibilities of information technology in such a way that the technical scope of the company is expanded or even redesigned can be ( source ). In the course of my research, I analyzed two studies, which I would like to explain in this article, to show the current state of agility. Study 1: Status Quo Agile Methods The first study was carried out by Komus (2020). With the help of an online survey, over 600 specialists were asked about the current use and importance of agile methods. The survey shows that the vast majority of the respondents’ projects are currently organized in a mixed manner, i.e. contain agile and classic…

digitalization 21. March 2021

Current studies on automation

Automation means the use of artificial systems. These are systems that follow decisions based on a process that is previously established. For many years, companies have been adapting technologies (hardware and software) in order to automate activities or to support them technologically. I examined study in the course of my research work. I would like to present two of them today to give an impression of automation. Study 1 examines the influence of automation on company success, study 2 deals with the changes in occupational profiles due to progressive automation. Study 1: CRISP 2018 In the first study, the influence of automation on corporate success was assessed on the basis of interviews in over 150 companies from all industries (Crisp 2018). According to their own information, the majority of companies are currently still at the beginning of the automation of processes. The results of the study are: In our company,…

digitalization 21. March 2021

Current studies on cloud computing

For me, cloud computing is defined as the use of IT infrastructure to make IT resources available flexibly via the Internet. To get an overview of the topic, I present two studies that I analyzed in the course of my research. Study 1 examines the specific use as well as the potential and risks of cloud computing. Study 2 has a similar focus, which compares the results of the two studies. Study 1: Concrete use as well as potentials and risks The first study is Bitkom’s Cloud Monitor (2019) and is based on a survey of over 500 companies on various aspects. The study shows that more than 70% of the companies surveyed are now testing or actively using cloud technologies. The results are: Cloud users (73%),Cloud planner (19%),Cloud objectors (8%). According to the participants, particular potential is the digitization of internal processes and procedures in the company, the development…

Work 4.0 21. March 2021

The last 5 years count – why specialists often rest on old successes

You are probably familiar with at least one of the following two situations: You are new to the company and one employee is highly praised for helping the company a lot 10 years ago. However, after getting to know each other, you notice that this employee is currently hardly worth any more and is more like a hype.You have an applicant who talks about numerous successful projects 10 years ago but the CV of the last 5 years is actually rather poor. “It used to be good” Many employees believe this sentence when they come across such employees. I often notice that old successes have a long-lasting effect on employees who have been with the company for 10-15 years and often such successes still carry great weight when changing jobs. But I see a danger: Such employees tend to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s methods! The last 5 years are…