Learning to Love Data Science

Chapter 7. Building Functional Teams for the IoT Economy

Topline Summary

Developing products and services for the Internet of Things will require levels of collaboration and information sharing that might seem extreme or even risky when compared to conventional standards. As digital on-demand manufacturing becomes the norm rather than the exception, however, the traditional linear process of software developers throwing code “over the wall” to hardware designers who then throw their designs “over the wall” to manufacturers is clearly obsolete. If the IoT is going to work, all of the relationships across the extended value chain will need to be reevaluated, rethought, and realigned.

This report, written in 2015 for the O’Reilly Solid Conference in San Francisco, describes the challenges of building functional teams of software developers, hardware designers, and manufacturers for the emerging IoT economy.

You don’t have to be a hardcore dystopian to imagine the problems that can unfold when worlds of software collide with worlds of hardware.

When you consider the emerging economics of the Internet of Things (IoT), the challenges grow exponentially, and the complexities are daunting.

For many people, the IoT suggests a marriage of software and hardware. But the economics of the IoT involves more than a simple binary coupling. In addition to software development and hardware design, a viable end-to-end IoT process would include prototyping, sourcing raw materials, manufacturing, ...