Agile best practice series: Backlog Refinement

Have you ever wondered how the products you use every day are designed? Meet a user experience designer who believes that users are essential to their professional life. In this article, you’ll learn how designers create products that meet users’ needs and preferences through user-centred design. Get a glimpse into the design process and see why putting users first is crucial for creating enjoyable and effective products.

In software development, requirements are crucial for bridging the gap between stakeholders and the development team. Natural language is a popular technique for documenting requirements but is prone to misinterpretation. This article explores the challenges of using natural language and provides tips for writing effective requirements.

Have you ever thought about the challenges and goals of adopting Agile for large, traditional technology companies? In this series of articles, we will share how we approached them, how we worked together and, most importantly, what we learnt partnering with one of them.

Today marks the completion of my one-year anniversary at ERNI, and I am filled with gratitude for the incredible experiences I have had during this time. From the very first day, I was welcomed with open arms by a team of wonderfully supportive colleagues who not only helped me acclimate to my new role but also made me feel like a valuable member of the team.

Discover how to make better decisions using the decision analysis method (DAM). This article explains the theoretical and practical steps in creating a DAM, including working environment, formulating the decision problem, selecting alternatives, collecting decision criteria, and weighting and evaluating criteria. Learn how to calculate the benefit, perform sensitivity analysis and document your results. Make rational decisions with emotional impact using a DAM.

What do you think of when you hear the term user experience design? Do you picture adapted user interfaces? Do you ask yourself what a user experience designer can do? In both cases, this article is written just for you. We want to show you that user experience design produces more than appealing user interfaces. You should also be able to get an idea of what expertise UX design involves and what you can expect from it.

This article takes a closer look at selected aspects and provides some tips. It is based on the general understanding of software maintenance and personal experience from a long-term software development and maintenance mandate in the medical device industry. However, it is also applicable to other sectors.

Have you ever thought about the challenges and goals of adopting Agile for large, traditional technology companies? In this series of articles, we will share how we approached them, how we worked together and, most importantly, what we learnt partnering with one of them.

This article explains under which circumstances and in which projects Test Automation brings added value and how to choose an appropriate Test Automation solution.

In this article, I will explain how to use the DiSG model to identify the personality traits of your message receiver and how to adjust your communication to get their full attention.

Even though the importance of testing in software projects has been proven many times before, even large companies sometimes neglect it. In this article, with the help of two examples, I will emphasise the mistakes to avoid, followed by an introduction of the testing process set-up.

In the final chapter of the Triple-A Saga, I will be talking about the word “agile” and what it means to me. Of course, it will be in the context of architecture, and I will also introduce to you its connotation to the enablers, the architects.

When it comes to business-related face-to-face networking, I have had the experience that people either like the topic or try to avoid it consciously. Either way, this article should give some insights and tips on how someone can start building relationships and begin developing a potential network.

Do you want to share your full hardware setup with each developer in your team without passing it around? Or do you want to reduce the burden of the manual execution of your on-target tests to detect regression earlier? This article addresses these topics and gives you a conceptual overview of how to run your continuous integration pipeline stages on your embedded target.

The second part of the triple-A saga focuses on the enabler of architecture – the architect. I will explain the roles of the architects as well as the definition itself, followed by the types of architects and what I believe is required to be a successful architect with some examples from many years of my professional experience.

To keep up with market trends, many companies are faced with the decision of whether to implement Requirements Traceability. This article explains the advantages and challenges of Requirements Traceability and how these challenges can be overcome.

Data architectures undergo continuous changes and evolution. This article addresses some of the trade-offs when dealing with common questions around data architectures, and how a microservices architecture can help to answer them.

Architecture is as much about thinking and creating as it is about communicating. In my many years of experience, I have seen excellent ideas go to waste because they were neither understood nor communicated. I want to bring you on a journey to explore an essential triad in the Digital Era: Architecture, Architects, and Agile. This Triple-A concept or Triad shall be considered as the highest competitive level of quality or achievement.

Do you know the difference between an email with data delivery and a self-service data product? This short article presents a brief case for data productization and why you need to lay the data-centered groundwork before building upon it.

Concentrate on the needs of your customers and the challenges in the market. Innovations will only prevail if they create added value for your customers. Put yourself in their shoes and find out what your customers really want and what they would spend their money on.

Innovation doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time for new ideas to take root. And it may take many years to introduce a new culture that makes innovation one of its central components.

Being innovative means acting differently to the competition. It means bringing new products, services or business models to the market. To get to new ideas, you first need to let go of existing patterns and structures and let fresh air in. The motto is: think different!

The aim of the innovation process should also encompass the creation of new product or service ideas with a high level of business benefit,
using new technologies or replacing the existing business model with a disruptive approach. Innovation means systematically creating ideas, selecting the value-creating solutions from among these and then implementing them as quickly as possible.

The digital transformation is rapidly accelerating the speed of innovation. Technological progress and social change are resulting in new products and services that better serve to satisfy the needs of consumers and which form the basis for new business models. At the same time, the possibilities of more intense collaboration have dramatically improved as a result of modern communication technologies.

Conventional understanding of the economy is based on a linear model; natural resources are extracted and processed into products. The consumer buys these and uses them. When they are worn out or are no longer needed the consumer disposes of the products. This model fails to recognise the high economic, environmental and social costs associated with the extraction, processing and disposal of raw materials and is therefore seen as unsustainable in the long term.

The 2022 edition of the European Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, also known as EuroMedLab, was held this April in Munich (Germany), after being rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of delegates and visitors attended the congress, which took place from April 10^th to April 14^th at the International Congress Center of Munich.

Augmented reality is one of the big buzzwords that are decisively shaping Industry 4.0. In the IoT, the Internet of Things, machine and machine as well as man and machine are increasingly merging with each other. It is inevitable that this will also change people’s perception and thus their reality.

Human history is characterised by the search for more intelligent solutions for day-to-day problems. Whether it’s the hand axe, wheel or computer – without constant innovation there would never have been progress, simply stagnation. Innovation allows humans to accomplish more, gaining personal advantage more quickly than others with better or new solutions.

My first five months at ERNI were exciting and I learned a lot. Officially, I started my journey at ERNI (Germany) on the 2nd of November 2021. But I was given the chance to accompany our Managing Director and my people unit leader to a sales/get to know talk with a new customer even a couple of days early. As the recruiting process took place mostly online because of the COV-SARS II Pandemic, it was the first time I met our MD and the second time I met my people unit leader – right before we entered the customer’s office. I was excited and nervous, but they made me feel like part of the team from the start. We had a great appointment and I got extensive and appreciative feedback.

Once the decision to outsource has been made, the next question is: Which model should be chosen? For example, offshoring, nearshoring or onshoring? And how can you find a reliable partner who understands your corporate culture and goals so well that friction losses are kept to a minimum?

Here at ERNI, we foster interdisciplinary collaboration. This Technology Letter shows the collaboration within an interdisciplinary team. With our Experts in Agile Methodology, IoT and Machine Learning, we take a closer look at hyped buzzwords like Cloud Computing, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. But we move beyond the hype this time to the perspective of practitioners, who share their condensed insights and perspective. Of course, we won’t forget about business and how all the activities need to be linked together so business benefits arise – to close the loop.

Ecosystems belong to the future, don’t they? To explore this question, we talked to Bernhard Lingens from the University of Lucerne. He explained to us not only how ecosystems create innovations and become dominant, but also that there is often an easier way.

For any company just starting out with IoT or simply considering implementing it, it’s important to understand that IoT is more of a concept than a technology that you simply install. This paradigm shift presents a cultural challenge for many organisations as they try to derive the most value from IoT.

The availability of data from a wide variety of sources along with their evaluation and further processing without bureaucratic or technical hurdles sounds like paradise. What seems almost utopian at a time when, due to the pandemic, we are still frequently entering contact data with pens on paper, will be the status quo in many areas of our lives in the not-too-distant future. More and more data will be captured and stored digitally. With the corresponding spread of this digitalisation potential, a Data Paradise will be created.

Anna Bespalov is a Business Consultant at ERNI Germany. She has lived in Berlin since 1997, but was born in the former Soviet Union. Anna comes from Belarus, so the current situation is very close to her. That’s why she didn’t hesitate for a second to volunteer to help in the Ukrainian refugee crisis. She told us how each of us can get involved to create solidarity.

That is the fundamental question. It may sound exaggerated and pompous, but it is a question that arises with every digital business case: What does it really achieve? What real problem does it solve and what new problem does it create?

Human Machine Interface. What sounds like the invention of a science fiction film is in fact an elementary component of the new industrial revolution that is taking place around us at an ever-faster pace. In this new industry, man and machine, human and artificial intelligence are merging more and more quickly.

With evolving technologies more and more healthcare providers invest in IoT to achieve better patient outcomes, lower costs and improve efficiency. But does IoT fit into the healthcare ecosystem? Which benefits does it bring to different stakeholder groups?

As our population ages and the cost of care increases, the healthcare industry must find innovative ways to solve operational, clinical, and financial challenges.

Disruptive technologies can improve the pulse of healthcare. They are changing ways of working across the whole ecosystem. Big data, AI, mobile applications, 3D printing, advanced sensors and other technologies will continue to create new opportunities for medtech companies. Voice technology is being adopted faster than any previous technology, from chatbots and doctor visits, to home health care.

Some authors claim that human intelligence is growing exponentially. If you look at the development of the past 2000 years, it is easy to doubt this given the wars and atrocities. On the other hand, it is striking that at least the development of technology seems to obey the law of exponential growth.

The global pandemic, acted as a catalyst, reinforced the pre-existing transformation tendencies and increased the sense of urgency for businesses to focus on the right technologies and get the best out of them.

The little black dress among communication channels. It goes well with everything, always looks good and when you put it on, it fits like second skin – the blog. Here’s how it emerged from the niche corners of the early internet to become a perennial favourite, what you need to consider and what you get out of it.

Stories have shaped humanity like little else. They have brought people together and torn them apart, triggered wars and inspired peace. They are powerful! Even in marketing and corporate communication.

Have you ever stumbled upon a video on YouTube that was produced for Instagram and then watched the video in portrait format on your computer screen? Or did you click it away again immediately? That’s why it’s important to optimise content for different channels.

First there were tales told orally, then (cave) paintings and then the first written texts. The way we package our content has always been subject to change and even today new possibilities are constantly emerging. Here you can find out how to make use of them and what to look out for.

Digitalisation is the topic of the day. In a nutshell, it is about the increasing networking of the world. Of course, the bottom line is that it is not “the world” that is being networked, but devices and machines. The foundation of this transformation is so-called M2M or machine-to-machine communication. Very roughly, M2M refers to the automatic exchange of information between different end devices.

Data is driving the future of businesses, and companies not prepared for this transformation are at risk of being left behind. Let us uncover some facts and figures about Big Data.

Nowadays, companies face many digital challenges, especially with regard to current and future customer target groups and their needs. For a local bank, we looked at how to better serve customers in the digital space with the help of collected data.

Dr Stephanie Friedrich has focused on insurance fraud for years. In this issue of .experience, she spoke with us about the changes Big Data and analytics are bringing to the industry.

Smart and predictive maintenance refers to all technical and organizational measures that use digital tools, to rapidly increase the maintenance and service efficiency. Thereby on the one hand creating new business opportunities and on the other hand reducing costs. A central component of smart maintenance is the collection, processing and analysis of data from machines, plants and even whole production facilities. The goal is to detect errors and defects in advance, before they occur. This makes maintenance more effective and prevents breakdowns. It saves costs and resources. In this interview Anastasia Rachmann from ERNI Switzerland talks about why a company should invest into smart maintenance and what its advantages are.

The Swiss Banking domain is facing a change. There are factors and economical and political framework conditions which banks are exposed to. These conditions are making their existence a challenge, and if nothing changes, the financial institutions will lose their revenues and contact with the clients.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain are relatively new technologies, with the latter being the younger invention. Both are highly used all over the Internet as top tech buzzwords for attracting attention or intriguing the reader. This intrigue obviously exists, as you are curiously reading this article to find out more about this technological blending and how it impacts our society.

Today, more and more companies – from the manufacturing sector to the engineering industry – are starting to use digital twins to optimise products, refine processes and predict possible failures. What is the technology all about and when to take it into account – we spoke to Anastasia Rachman, ERNI Switzerland.

The perspective from which we look at health insurers is changing. With the shift to an ecosystem, insurers are transforming from a pure service provider to a health manager that accompanies the patient along the entire customer journey. This, in turn, has a huge impact on the perception of the customer – from the bad guy who doesn’t want to pay the treatment bills to someone who helps to manage the customer’s wellbeing to avoid future costs. This creates a whole new set of business model opportunities and exponential innovation within the healthcare industry, with many insurance companies tipped to become such a partner in healthcare. Accompanying the customer along the entire journey and orchestrating the various touchpoints and stakeholders has many benefits besides changing customer perception. Insurance companies can automate, control costs and create value – extending the value chain along the treatment path. Healthcare is no longer limited to business days and office hours. More and more, it’s about 24/7 treatment.

The healthcare ecosystem is expanding towards including new types of data, new methods for collecting and analyzing them, and including new players. The future of healthcare is likely to be driven by digital transformation enabled by interoperable data and open secure platforms. Health will likely be about maintaining wellness rather than responding to illness. According to McKinsey, 30% of global revenue will be attributable to ecosystems by 2025. It is expected that 12 distinct and massive ecosystems will form around basic human and organisational needs.

In our series Meet our experts, we move now from MedTech to the Manufacturing domain. Thorsten Ulbricht joined ERNI as Principal Consultant in the area of IoT. Read about his passion for all aspects related to IoT and Smart Manufacturing.

Have you ever wondered who the faces are behind our expertise? In our new series, we will reveal and introduce our teams working on customer projects in various industry domains. Today, we start with Ruben Rodriguez from ERNI Spain and will talk about his insights from MedTech.

Whether you are a young professional unsure which path to take in your career, a recruiter trying to better understand the role of a GUI (Graphical User Interface) test automation engineer or a project manager trying to get a better picture of the challenges faced in this role, this article is for you.

When we look at the evolution of technology in the diagnostics area, we can differentiate three main phases in the evolution of its intended use.

At the beginning, diagnostics companies were focused on improving analytic instruments in terms of accuracy, velocity and usage. In this first phase, the need appeared to centralise and manage the information provided by the instruments to improve medical decisions.

The second phase was focused in the automation of laboratories. Instruments were not isolated anymore. Step by step, the whole laboratory became a big interconnected system, and the sample workflows were centralised and controlled automatically. The focus was put on maximising performance and minimising human interaction.

Nowadays, we are finding ourselves in the first steps of the third phase in the area of diagnostics automation: use the technology for moving from sickness care to health care or, in other words, from being reactive to being proactive.

Intelligent apps are the core of smart businesses. They are, just as their name suggests, AI-enabled apps that use machine learning. The intelligence of the apps is derived from processing vast amounts of data and it has the ability to come to conclusions that are otherwise hidden to a human mind.

In the last year and a half, Stefan was assigned a project leadership mandate in the Med Tech Industry. We have met him for an interview, and he shares his lessons with us.

It has become obvious that being ready for a digital change has become one of the biggest challenges tech companies face nowadays and we will certainly all be a part of it.

This Techletter provides you with a brief overview of Apache Kafka, its concepts and its use and benefit in context of various architectural approaches and use cases.

The next PI planning is around the corner and your Product Management has already planned to bring a lot of new features for the customers. At the same time, your System Architects have planned to migrate some components to new services in order to be compliant with the company guidelines and the development teams are struggling with some technical debt that was always deprioritized in favor of new business features. How can you explain why we have to work on some enablers first?

Complex software development projects traditionally incorporate requirements engineers who elicit and define the requirements of a piece of software by means of various tools. Although the agile process assigns requirements specification responsibilities to the product owner, who may delegate tasks to the developers, highly skilled requirements engineers are a much-solicited role (at ERNI). As many companies are deciding to launch machine learning projects, we want to discuss the requirements that must be considered and understood by all stakeholders.

Agile is becoming more and more of a commodity, even in MedTech. There have been many conversations about whether the medical device design process could be enhanced by becoming more “agile”. Start-ups that are coming up are functioning this way from the start and the big players are introducing it as well. Read about our expertise not only on what challenges this brings but also what chances come with it.

Model-Based Systems Engineering allows a medical product development organization to handle the dependencies and interactions between the parties involved in the development through a formal, data-based system model.

Everyone who knows agile knows the Agile Manifesto. It covers the principles which formed the foundation of our agile mindset. In this article we deal with them in more depth.

Carlos studied Chemical Engineering in Valencia and just recently in April joined ERNI as the new QM and PQM responsible for global activities in the newly to be opened site. Read about his experience with the company during his first months.

On the backgrounds of the recent pandemics, good global activities arise. The ERNI Development Days (EDD) have always been held per country locally and in person, now for the first time in history all 800 ERNI employees took part at the very first global EDD held remotely.

There are many companies in MedTech, and more generally speaking in all industries, that are considering Predictive Maintenance and seeing huge potential in saving services costs and increasing customer satisfaction. The approach is part of their service strategy. Why is it important for the MedTech area?

Although we are able to influence certain aspects and features of the environment we show to our customers, we can’t control how they will be perceived.

Each touchpoint is an opportunity to excite your customers. We will show you how best to use these opportunities.

The right content in the right place might just be the one thing that turns a prospective buyer into a customer. People don’t want to search aimlessly; they want to be pointed in the right direction – so make sure they find their way to you!

A year has passed now since the start of remote work at ERNI in regard to the corona outbreak. How has the everyday working life changed and how do we tackle the related challenges? Today Joel Sommer from our Zurich site shares his tips for an efficient home office practice.

Every year, the number of companies that are involving end-users in the earliest stages of software development to gather and incorporate feedback as soon as possible rises. But there are still plenty of companies that are getting in touch with the end-user only after the entire product is released and ready to be used for the first time.

The IoT world is a big world that everybody is talking about. IoT products nowadays come in different forms –some are labelled as IoT, but in fact they represent only a small portion of what an IoT product really entails. A fully fledged IoT project not only requires programming and hardware expertise but also expertise on a broad range of domains from energy to smart home and even automotive.

The business world is influenced by trendy buzzwords, often tagged with the hashtag #. In this article I am taking a deeper look at three of those that are related to the current work setting: NewWork, Agile and Digital Transformation.

Travelling can be chaotic, so count yourself lucky if you have a map. It’s essentially the same for the customer journey, with one small difference – it’s not the travellers who need a map.

We are continuing our series on experiences of newjoiners at ERNI. Now, Georgi, our colleague from ERNI Germany speaks about his first year at the company.

Have you ever found yourself thinking about what drives us as people and keeps us motivated? Today, our colleague Barbara Schiller from ERNI Germany tells us about a book that changed her perspectives – Drive by Daniel H. Pink. Read the book summary.

How to keep team morale on a high level during remote work? That was the question I asked myself as a Scrum Master after the situation Covid-19 forced the teams to work from home.

Michal Piskozub joined ERNI Germany in January. He is part of the new team in Schorndorf and works as a Test Engineer. Read about his experience during the first month at the company.

Where do banks and insurance companies stand in the digital change? Where do they want to go and how is this to be achieved? For the purpose of situation assessment, ERNI has developed the Digital Maturity Fitness Check.

A month since Leonard started his journey at ERNI on 4 Jan 2021, he would love to share his discoveries with regards to ERNI. Some nuggets of information using the 10P’s for Business model that Leonard has created back in 2019, over a period of time he mentions here.

“Erni? Like Erni and Bert? No ERNI! So, my family and friends didn’t just react once when I talked about my new job”, says Florian Benzler. Here is his experience during the first month at the company.

With Kanban, the flow of tasks is being visualised. That is the basic perception people have about it. But Kanban can be also much more. Most of the users however do not know all the possibilities it offers. The basic use of Kanban is the tracking and overview of open tasks. Yet, as an experience, Kanban is often set up and drafted but then in the end not developing further. It is there, defined, but not really used.

We have many active communities at ERNI that make up our global team spirit. At ERNI Romania, the book club recently red and talked about the Midnight library. Find out what the members have to say about this book.

Nowadays, in a more digitised era, there is an increasing need to develop new applications faster and faster. Things are moving quickly and so is the demand for shorter time-to-market with lower costs. Serverless Architecture is a relatively new and rising approach that promises just that. We will explore the characteristics and benefits of Serverless Architectures to see how this can be an option worth considering the next time we go to choose our technology stack.

Leonard Cheong joined ERNI Singapore on 4 January this year as Managing Director. After his first 2 weeks, he describes his impressions and his onboarding process.

Technology has always been important in banking, as the long history of e-banking shows. But today, technological progress, changing customer behavior and the entry of new competitors have led financial institutions to intensively address the issue of digitalisation and the associated opportunities and risks. Our guest author Prof. Dr. Andreas Dietrich points out some of these developments.

Pavo Kohler joined ERNI in May 2016. In this interview, he summarises the book by Horst Schulze, Excellence Wins.

Mobile payment is growing rapidly. The proportion of contactless card payments in Switzerland has more than doubled in the last 12 months, while cash withdrawals from ATMs are declining. Since the beginning of the Corona crisis, payments have also been increasingly made by using mobile phones and Smartwatches. In a highly competitive environment, the brand profile of the providers is crucial.

Evert Smit joined ERNI in September 2018. Currently Principal Consultant, Evert is responsible for topics like Strategy, Change Management, Digital Transformation and Data Intelligence. In this interview, he summarises the bestselling book by Juval Noah Harari, Sapiens. He will also speak about how this book influenced him in his sales and leadership role.

Six ERNIans from the Spanish Agile Community attended the Agile in the New Normal event, allowing us to learn about recent tendencies, meet some new agilists and bring more knowledge to the Community and to ERNI. We enjoyed various keynotes related to Agile and how different companies are adapting to the ‘new normal’. Keep reading to find out more about this event.

Brand experience design aims to form strong experiences for users. This consists of much more than just a good logo and a snappy tagline. For a genuine experience the spirit of the company must be captured and transmitted through all touchpoints.

Distributed Ledger Technology or “Blockchain“ is also considered a game-changer in the financial services sector. Is it just hype or are there already useful applications in banks and insurance companies?

In the recent episode of the Book summary series our colleague Nikol Laschan speaks about her book tip Failosophy. Find out more about the art of failure.

Today’s agile book summary comes from our Principal Consultant Patrick Wilhelm. What does Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder say to its readers? How can it navigate you especially in times of insecurity like the ones we live in now?

The number of digital touchpoints between consumers and brands continues to grow. For successful communication, they must be specifically selected and managed. The strategic and systematic management of all contact points between the person and the brand is crucial for success and presents companies and agencies alike with a number of challenges.

Robotic Process Automation, or RPA for short, has raised many hopes in recent years and caused a stir in the financial services industry. What can this technology do and what can it not do? Sandra Bruderer and Remo Rambaldi, Senior Consultants at ERNI, recommend a well-considered use of software robots.

For a leading developer and manufacturer of injection and infusion systems for self-medication and a renowned diabetes specialist we performed an Agile Fitness Check. Learn more about what the customer gained.

Michael R. Wade had probably just seen the film classic Dracula or the horror flick Eclipse when he coined the term “Value Vampire“ in connection with the digital disruption of our days. The professor for innovation and strategy at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland, uses it to describe young companies that are destroying existing business models without mercy: “They offer their products or services extremely cheap or even free of charge and thus suck out the profit pool, which leads to shrinking market shares for the established providers.“ At the same time, these startups also convinced consumers with a better customer experience and innovative services.

In this episode of our series about Agile best practices, we focus on sprint planning as the first of the Scrum ceremonies. Joffrey Zehnder and Zuzana Gočová explain what they have encountered in their work as Agile coaches, including the pitfalls they frequently experience and how to avoid them.

Cross-platform mobile development surpasses the limitations of native mobile development. You only need one team that can develop apps for both Android and iOS, instead of having two teams that develop apps on each platform separately. Since its release two years ago, Flutter has been used by developers as one of their go-to cross-platform mobile development framework.

Make or buy? Do-it-yourself or outsourcing? Every company today is challenged to put itself, its services, its organisation and its costs to the test bench again and again. At the latest, this raises the question of what belongs to one’s own core competencies and what does not? And this is followed by the question of whether it is advantageous to outsource certain processes or areas. However, this decision can be quite complex and is not so easy to make.

Are your Scrum Daily meetings lasting more than 15 minutes? Are you achieving Dailies’ goals?

Patrik Opát joined ERNI in April 2019. With his previous experience as Scrum Master, IT Business Analyst and IT Consultant, he became Service Unit Leader of Scrum Masters and Product Owners on our Bratislava, Slovakia site later in January 2020. Patrik follows his motivation of helping people improving their work life through coaching, guidance, process improvements and removing impendments.

The reasons for outsourcing are actually always the same: Lack of in-house expertise – i.e. too few or not the right employees on the one hand – and concentration on the core business on the other. Often there is also a lack of internal resources for the implantation of new technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence or virtual reality.

Simply capturing data doesn’t automatically make for good customer relations. The desired effect is only achieved when you have the right idea to match.

Are people outside the team assigning directly tasks to the scrum team members? Is the team clear about what they are expected to do?

Christine Salzeller has been with ERNI since 2017. In 2013, at her previous job, she first came in contact with Agile and Scrum, which she got to know as an alternative to the classical waterfall model. She took over the role of a Scrum Master at ERNI in April 2019 and currently coaches three teams. In this interview, Christine tells us what a typical day of an Agile coach looks like.

Today’s agile book summary comes from our Agile Coach Christian Glück. Read about why he thinks the book This is Lean from Niklas Modig and Pär Åhlström is the best he has read so far.

Brands must act successfully throughout the entire customer journey. And this doesn’t end once a successful purchase has been made.

Have you ever wondered what makes an Agile practice run smoothly? The factors are described widely. From daily life, you can point out habits that make the difference and are worth following. In this series, our Agile expert Joffrey Zehnder reveals what he has learned throughout his years of working as an Agile Coach.

In our digital day and age companies can only be successful if they see things from the customer’s point of view and create a better customer experience.

Tanja Neuenschwander joined ERNI in September 2018. Currently, she is a Professional Consultant and a Product Owner of an agile team. She has been practicing agile for more than 10 years now in several different roles. She used to be a software developer and is now more focused on the business side of agile environments. Today, she introduces a book dealing with agile teamwork called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.

What does an outcome-based collaboration require from the customer? What do you have to prepare yourself for when considering switching to this kind of setup? Someone who can tell the best is one of our customers who introduced this model into their organisation. We talked to the Sourcing Manager at the customer about his view and experience.

Are you facing collaboration and tracking challenges on virtual retrospectives? Find tooling tips about how to boost your feedback loops.

Our customer in the telecommunications area requested more efficiency in the service delivery alongside raising quality. Is it possible to reach these seemingly contradictory aspects? Yes. We proposed to switch from the time and material model to an outcome-based collaboration. Read more about how the realisation worked out and what it meant for the customer.

Nowadays someone’s decision to buy is no longer a single, impulsive act but usually the culmination of many steps taken before the final selection is made.

If the maturity with the customer allows it, an outcome-based collaboration is an effective way for both the customer and the service provider. In this article, we talk about what outcome-based cooperation is based on and what benefits it can bring to all parties.

In our new four-part interview series about Digital Business Consulting, we want to give you some insights into the daily work of our experts. We talked to four of them about their recent projects, the challenges they faced and how they overcame them to create the most value for our customers. In the last interview of this series, Patrick Wilhelm talks about how he and his team helped a company, which is rich in tradition, to move into the 21st century. He is active as a Principal Consultant for the Swiss market unit and is globally responsible for the Innovation and Digital Business Consulting services.

In our new four-part interview series about Digital Business Consulting, we want to give you some insights into the daily work of our experts. We talked to four of them about their recent projects, the challenges they faced, and how they overcame them to create the most value for our customers.

In the third interview of this series, Evert Smit talks about consulting on bringing a state organisation to a more state-to-the-art IT system and helping them keep their image of an innovation company. Evert is a Principal Consultant with long-year expertise on topics like Strategy, Change Management, Digital Transformation and Data Intelligence.

An association of architects and engineers in charge of overall norms and directives in the construction area needed to respond to the changing requirements of their end customers on interaction and exchange.

B2B companies need strong brands in order to lend an emotional power of distinction to rational arguments. Strong brands help companies to assert
themselves in competitive markets.

Brands today have a very different role to play compared to just a few years ago. Customers expect them to understand their needs perfectly and to act accordingly.

The IoT World Congress is the largest IoT event in the world, dedicated to helping increase productivity via disruptive technology. The ERNI engineers who attended the congress summarise their opinions and concerns regarding IoT deployment and development over the next few years.

A customer of ours in the area of science-based innovation asked us to develop a 5-year strategy for their IT department. This is how we took on the challenge.

In our new four-part interview series about Digital Business Consulting, we want to give you some insights into the daily work of our experts. We talked to four of them about their recent projects, the challenges they faced and how they overcame them to create the most value for our customers.
In the first interview of this series, Nicolas Neuwirth talks about how he and his team initiated a new data strategy in just 3 months. He’s a Zürich resident and a Junior Consultant at ERNI with a master’s degree in business innovation at the university of St. Gallen.

There are many companies that struggle with the transformation into a DevOps organisation. In general, it is challenging to organise a bigger group of people. On a company level this is even harder and the stakes are higher. Again, there are companies that can guide you on the way as a trusted partner.

There are four technological approaches for the development of a mobile app: Native, Cross-platform, Hybrid and PWA. Which option to choose depends on many factors. ERNI has now developed a questionnaire that supports you in this important decision: the AppType Chooser.

Strong brands ensure long-term customer loyalty to a company and create turnover and growth. They are present in the minds of potential customers, are seen in a positive light and enjoy a sense of trust.

One of our biggest customers in the transportation area approached us with a request to establish a programme for digitalisation of processes in the area of project engineering.

An interview with Dr Sergi Figuerola, Founder and CTO of the 5G Barcelona Alliance.

The manufacturers of health apps have not had an easy time in recent years. The e-health market is not only fiercely competitive, but is also fraught with numerous legal hurdles.

When we speak of design, we usually mean something’s visual appearance. Design is much more than this, however.

Today, more and more companies – from the manufacturing sector to the engineering industry – are starting to use such technology to optimise products, refine processes and predict possible failures.

IoT has been changing the mindset of the entire sports industry for years now. The IoT market does have an upward trend and the top leagues and teams will be a significant part of it. IoT can not only provide useful data when developing one’s performance but also influence the team strategies, boost fan experience, and help referees make the game fairer. ERNI engineers and keen sports enthusiasts Robert Cluet and Toni de la Torre discussed the key areas that the sports industry focuses on nowadays and offered their opinions from multiple perspectives.

At the very beginning, we find the most important question. What does a brand stand for? And where is the brand heading to? People are irrational and so are their choices. This reflects itself in many decisions they make. While that’s perfectly fine in private life, it can be challenging for a company. In each brand, each company and in every design aspect there is the potential to touch the people around. And a strong brand and appealing design generate business value. You can control and optimise the emotions of your brand based on data.

Only when a brand impresses the consumer, stands out from the competition, enthuses, captivates and surprises is the consumer prepared to buy, change supplier or try something new. This is exactly what brand experience design aims to do.

Healthcare is facing numerous challenges. As our population ages and the cost of care increases, the healthcare industry must find innovative ways to solve operational, clinical, and financial challenges.

Technology allows these devices to generate, collect, analyse and transmit data, creating the Internet of Medical Things: a connected infrastructure of health systems and services.

We all know it, Covid-19 killed human interactions. But there are two different contexts our ERNIans are living nowadays

In our second episode of the interviews with three Agile experts at ERNI, we deal with the transformation to agile itself. What does it bring along and are there any tips for doing it right? What pitfalls are there?

If your company is able to deliver a positive experience for your customers, it not only raises their willingness to buy but also their loyalty to your brand. To find out, if your company is able to do so, you can start by taking an unbiased look through your customer’s eyes. Would you be happy with the experience?

At ERNI Germany we as a team want to stay connected throughout the Corona crisis.

There are plenty of project management methodologies, so what makes Scrum so special and how can we compare it to traditional project management frameworks?

Agile is functioning well, remotely just as good as in person which is especially important in the time of the Corona crisis now. Having expertise with working in distributed teams, our experts Christian Glück, Tanja Neuenschwander and Joffrey Zehnder answer some of the principal questions about the methodology in our series of 2 episodes.

Design thinking, Lean and Agile are mainly based on in-person workshops, yet the reality of most teams is that they are global and thus not able to meet in person on an every-day basis.

Are you killed by overreporting? Are you overloaded with meetings, reports?

Due to the recent pandemic situation worldwide, we did our first fully remote design thinking and innovation workshop for a customer in Switzerland. The prospects are that this will ongoingly be a remote design thinking process also for the future.

Electronic records, faster and more precise diagnostics, new technologies helping people get better. There is no doubt that the future of hospitals is digital.

Welcoming a new employee in times of Corona and home office: Sandra Hohl started on 1 April 2020 as a Junior UX Engineer / Consultant and gives us an insight into how she experienced her remote onboarding process.

Working from home offices, ordering food from online shops, telemedicine via video – the global corona crisis has brought digital business models into the daily life of many people in record time. The current crisis shows us how important digital business models are these days.

These days we are confronted with a crisis of unprecedented proportions. Within a very short period of time, many social norms have been turned upside down, and we have to cope with challenges in our everyday lives that we have hardly known before.

Simply asking your colleagues something across the desk is less of a hurdle than writing an email and then waiting a long time for an answer. But even if a team member is on the other side of the world, you can still work efficiently. Learn some basics on how to keep the distance short despite the actual distance.

“He who does not move with the times, will be removed over time.” What the German poet, philosopher and playwright Friedrich Schiller prophesied more than 200 years ago on the subject of progress is also true today for the digital transformation.

Within the current situation related to measurements in regard to the Covid-19, remote work is becoming a crucial part of business continuity. What are the factors influencing its effectiveness? As a partner with experience in working with geographically dispersed teams we know the key factors to focus on.

Almost four months after their start at ERNI, the fresh colleagues summarise their impressions.

Digital Business Transformation is an umbrella term that is made up of many individual elements – which can include, for example, the digitalization of internal processes, customer experiences or business models. This is what makes the topic so complicated.

At ERNI Slovakia, we have a nice habit of having Breakfast at the office bi-monthly.

ERNI «Snow ‘nd Fun» started at the beginning of 2000 under the name «Snow Xtreme» organised by a former colleague. Typically two to four hard guys attended this event on the first Friday of March in Engelberg. Nothing but powder snow they were looking for.

Artificial intelligence is conquering the business world. But how do you actually teach devices to think for themselves? ERNI developer Marek Linka explains.

The first ERNI Development Day of 2020 was the first EDD I was attending just as an attendee since I joined the organisation team about two and a half years ago.

How artificial intelligence and machine learning can make everyday work in the automotive aftermarket easier.

Building software has never been this painless before. We now have powerful tools at our disposal such as version controls, greatly improved IDEs, the cloud, and many more. As these instruments enable us to build complex applications, the intricateness of the software architecture in our applications also evolves along the way.

It’s been exactly 6 months since I joined ERNI and my journey so far has been amazing.

It’s WomenHack at Facebook in Zurich. Again, our energetic ERNI Recruiting Team was participating at the beloved speed dating event.

In the European healthcare industry, software solutions are needed that are specially tailored to the respective care landscape in each country and can be rolled out nationwide.

In ERNI Romania we started a long-term collaboration with Babes Bolyai, one of the main universities in Cluj Napoca, with over 3,500 graduates each year in Mathematics and Informatics.

Teodor Vasile joined ERNI at its site in Munich in 2019 working as a Professional Consultant in the area of MedTech. How did he spend his first year at the company? Read the following lines and find out yourself. We are happy to have you on board, Doru!

What does the Blue Pen that has been in use at ERNI for years mean? Is there any philosophy behind it? Daniel Hartmeier as a long-year employee tells us.

Further within our Typical at ERNI Series, our colleague Braňo Pavelka from ERNI Slovakia explains why people on this site are used to have lunch at 11.

The fear that the machine will make people superfluous or even dominate them is old. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), these and other fears are more relevant than ever. For this reason, ethics is increasingly being discussed in this context.

Compared to large companies, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are generally lagging behind in the digital transformation.

According to a study by management consultants Roland Berger, the market for digital products and services in the healthcare sector in Europe is progressing faster than previously assumed: By 2025, the European-wide market volume is expected to be around EUR 155 billion. According to the forecast, digital healthcare offerings will then account for around eight percent of total spending in the healthcare sector.

At ERNI Spain, we have introduced a nice habit 3 years ago, which is called the Breakfast with Diamonds.

New, flexible strategies and agile working methods are necessary to modernize the IT of the financial services industry in Europe. This also applies to software programming.

Having a compelling mission, culture and values are critical for attracting and retaining top talent in a competitive job market.

After lots of challenges being encountered all throughout the year, ERNIans in the Philippines and Singapore celebrated its 2019 Year-end Party last December 06, 2019, which was held at Ace Hotel and Suites, a hotel near the EPH office.

It has become a lovely tradition already that the ERNI Slovakia employees participate in helping children in orphanages, crisis centers, children in foster families, or children in need every year before Christmas.

Margrethe Vestager has many plans. As Executive Vice President and Commissioner for Digital Policy of the new EU Commission, she is responsible for digitisation for a few weeks now. In order to score points in global competition with the US and China, for example, she wants to set binding targets for the introduction of digital citizen services, as there is still “considerable catching up to be done” in most countries. The same applies to infrastructure.

Computer programs today are anything but error-free – and they can only ever make decisions as well and as ethically as the person who developed them.

At ERNI Philippines – and generally, in the Philippines – we love karaoke. Life is smoother and happier with singing.

Today, we are starting a new series of articles dedicated to the typical things we have at ERNI. Let our colleagues tell you what is of habit in our company life.

With the industry-wide shift towards cloud computing, securing access to compute and data is becoming more important than ever. Unfortunately, strong security often limits ease of use. This is often felt within teams employing dev-ops practices like continuous integration and continuous deployment.

The EDD (ERNI Development Day) was the first ERNI event I attended after I joined the company 8 months ago, that’s why it is so special for me. I could get an impression about the authentic ERNI spirit here.

In the sense of “old ways don’t open new doors”,  ERNI is putting emphasis on training and developing the communication skills of its employees.

Attention! This year you will find us for the first time at the IT Days 2019 on 9-12 December in Frankfurt am Main.

Swiss Software Engineering goes West: ERNI now has its own office in the middle of New York’s Manhattan district.

How should a self-driving car decide when an accident is inevitable? Who is allowed to suffer damage and who is not? An exciting question that machine ethics is dealing with.

At ERNI, we believe the digitalisation is important across industries. The healthcare is not exempt from this improvings. Listen to new ERNI Podcast and learn more.

In our Insider Tips Series, this time we chose to present one colleague who is Bernese – through and through.

Soon, algorithms will decide in many areas, and not people. What role does ethics play in this?

Often, we hear the buzzword “Design Thinking” but what does it really mean and what’s behind it?

The next participant in  Insider tips series is our ERNI Germany colleague “Doru” Vasile Teodor…

On October 15, ERNI once again sponsored a meetup for software architects in Zurich, this time on the topic “The Distributed Big Ball of Mud”.

After the exciting string of job fairs that our Recruiting team participated in during the first half of the year, we are going on now.

Mulugheta Samuel (ERNI) – Agile Coach at ERNI Deutschland – came to Germany with the fall of the Berlin Wall end of 1989/beginning 1990.

If you have experienced nearshoring or offshoring, you already know that the choice of the right partner is crucial.

The WHO (World Health Organization) published a comprehensive report on the trends, challenges and solutions for our ageing population. The report sheds light on many aspects we all globally will have to deal with at a point of time in our lives.

Tipura Ilija, Professional Consultant at ERNI Switzerland reveals some pieces of his background in this episode of our Diversity Series.

Capabilities Leaders Need to Have to Ensure the Survival of Companies

Which are the biggest challenges of the healthcare industry in 2019?

How to combine teambuilding, fun and nature care in one? (Part 2)

Maneka Fahrer is Managing Director of Bloom Identity which – as of 2018 – is part of the ERNI Ecosystem…

Outsourcing tasks, projects or services is not new. It is nothing more than a modern form of labour division. Companies concentrate on their core competencies and outsource other activities to appropriate specialists. For example, the entire IT operation, individual tasks such as security and telecommunications, certain business processes or software development.

How to combine teambuilding, fun and nature care in one?

Which are the health events no one in the industry should miss in autumn 2019?

Franziska Grohmann is our third candidate in our Diversity Series. She works as a Senior Consultant for ERNI Switzerland but originally comes from Northern Germany.

The iconic doctor with a leather suitcase, illegible handwriting and conservative views is being substituted by the first internet generation: the handwriting is still illegible, but it does not matter, as the tech-savvy millennials typewrite everything.

We’re moving in a world that spins faster than it already does. New technologies are popping up that serve as enablers for the creation of new business models.

Highly praised by some – feared by others. Scepticism and concerns about the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are not only expressed by many employees who worry about their jobs, but also companies see risks – especially when it comes to data security.

Selim Akyol, Managing Director of the digital marketing agency NexMarket belonging to the ERNI Global has half Swiss and half Turkish roots.

Will artificial intelligence have the same impact as the steam engine had? Find here our brief overview of possible potentials and application examples for AI and data science.

ERNI scholars deeply express their gratitude to ERNI for opening up vast opportunities, and for igniting their interest in IT education. As the next step, the top three graduates will proceed with an internship at ERNI where they can further enhance their learnings and use their theoretical know-how to practical work.

Allow us to introduce you to the future of manufacturing. The fourth wave of industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, is already changing the world of manufacturing in many ways. Intelligent connection of all machines involved in the manufacturing process, automated data collection and analysis, autonomous decision making based on the current data from the environment – these are just some of the hot topics that manufacturers are talking about.

In the first episode of our Diversity Series we do not get tips from one person only…

Machine learning is research-intensive work with a more-than-usual amount of uncertainty that provides new challenges to an agile mindset. Furthermore, data scientists often have an academic background and have limited exposure working in a customer-focused engineering environment.

On 20th June 2019, at the ERNI Development Day taking place in Bern, Switzerland, a new Service was introduced by the name AI & Data Science.

Have you ever wondered what a day at ERNI looks like? Watch the second video from our “One day at ERNI”.

After a year now, on 8 June, nine colleagues from ERNI Slovakia again participated in the “Our City” initiative (Naše Mesto) making Slovakian capital city Bratislava a better place to live.

The benefits of IoT are many, but something that is common for most of them is cost reduction. Whether it is through better quality of products, fewer work-related accidents, or better tracking of shipments – the implementation of IoT typically brings in significant cost savings for a company. In our experience with clients, we’ve identified the following benefits:

The Summer Outing/Team Building is an annual company event that every employee looks forward to.

Read this interesting interview with our colleague Soňa which was included in series Women in IT.

Already 5^th year of IT Fooscup happened last week in Bratislava. This special event connects the world of IT with the favourite office activity – foosball.

What kind of tests can be automated and why is test automation an essential part of the development process? With the Information Technology industry developing more and more and becoming one of the core industries in society, the need for having the best and most reliable product is irrefutable.

At ERNI, we strongly believe in the benefits of intelligent apps. Currently, we are developing the “Intelligent Meeting Room”, where members of the meeting are recognised by a camera. Listen to ERNI Podcast and learn more.

Oracle. A company that holds the license to Java. Java. One of the most popular programming languages, according to Octoverse.
Oracle Java. An implementation of the Java language which costs money. Are you using Oracle Java? Are you paying the Oracle license fee? Continue to read if you want to find out what other options there are for using Java, like not to pay.

The new study of the “Institute of Financial Services Zug (IFZ)” of the University of Lucerne states that Swiss banks outsource more services than ever. The outsourcing volume of Swiss retail banks alone is estimated at CHF 2.2 billion. An estimated CHF 1.75 billion (80%) of this is accounted for by IT services.

Augmented reality has been a part of “the real reality” for a while now. It is predicted that AR would reach its peak in 2019. Do you agree? Listen to ERNI Podcast and learn more.

On 8-9 April in the premises of our Zurich office, our 18 ERNI colleagues went through a Leading SAFe course. This prepared the participants for the SAFe Agilist certification that they are entitled to take afterwards.

The n-tier or layered architecture is one of the most known and used concepts in enterprise development.

Welcome to our new home: You can find the ERNI office in Zurich now at Löwenstrasse 11, only a few minutes’ walk from the main train station.

Last month the EPH Social Project Core Group team paid a surprise visit to the ERNI 15 scholarship students.

Have you ever wondered what a day at ERNI looks like? We are starting a new video series about our colleagues and their working day.

Unit economics, a term from business meaning the fundamental minimum piece of your business that you can measure to understand where your revenue comes from, helps companies stay in control of their return of investments (ROIs).

This article can help you set up fully automated deployment of Azure DevOps build agents. It explains step-by-step instructions on how to set up automated deployment of self-hosted agents using Azure DevOps Pipelines.

Helping someone to see them become better is not an easy task. You need to exert all your efforts, attention and time to achieve it.

The winners of the internal ERNI Hero Team contest decided to use their reward for a good purpose – to visit the Haribon Foundation at Lumban for seedlings preparation.

Who says coffee is only good for drinking? It’s now good for painting too! Anyone can enjoy the art of coffee painting. This has encouraged me to start some Coffee Painting Workshops.