An interview with private lecturer Professor Dr. Holger Gast, Steinbeis Entrepreneur at the Steinbeis Consulting Center for Agile Development of Information Systems
For the past ten years, Dr. Holger Gast has been offering solutions at his Steinbeis Consulting Center for Agile Development of Information Systems. His aim is to provide affordable custom software that adds value for the customer. He told TRANSFER how he approaches new projects and how businesses needs have changed over the last decade.
Dr. Gast, what is your approach to developing custom software for your customers?
My attitude is that you only need custom software if specific business processes can’t be digitalized with standard software. When I’m developing a vision for a new software solution, I ask the customer if they have any Excel files with lists that a team has to update on a daily basis in order to do their work. The very existence of these lists is proof that the information they contain is mission-critical. The fact that they are in Excel files means that no standard solution is available for the specific processing requirements. And the need to update them every day points to an overhead with potential for optimization. As often as not, the biggest challenge in getting from this situation to a professional custom software solution involves thinking your way around Excel’s technical shortcomings. Custom software often enables previously unimaginable functionality that makes working with data so much easier. I’ve developed two simple techniques that I use. I start with the image of a green field – for the first workshop, I bring a fully executable application that has absolutely no content. This is the shell inside which the solution will grow. Nothing is fixed beforehand all decisions are made by the company’s experts. The second thing is that I never ask “What do you need in the software?”. Instead, I say “What do you want this process step to achieve?”. This helps to put the old ways of working to the back of people’s minds, freeing up space for targeted, creative solutions.
If a project is to succeed, I think it’s absolutely crucial to draw a clear distinction between the responsibilities of the company’s technical experts and my role as a software architect. The experts decide what content we are aiming for, while I suggest how this can be accomplished with software and often recommend a particular approach. But it is the experts who ultimately decide what gets implemented. This principle of never making content-related decisions myself leads to solutions that are a perfect fit for the customer’s needs and increases acceptance of the software further down the line.
Which tools do you use in your work?
When planning a software solution, you always need to take two things into account: the development side and the operational side. For the operational side, I use free and open-source software that has been around a long time and is used in millions of projects. It provides a tried-and-tested foundation that will remain stable over time and won’t require the dreaded programming adjustments when a new version comes out. And I always choose lightweight libraries so that, for typical team sizes, the application can be run on a virtual machine in the cloud for around ten euros a month.
The development side is where I come in as a Steinbeis expert. I use a special development environment that I created as a spin-off project after my lectures in software architecture at the University of Tübingen. It’s based on the model-driven engineering approach to software development. I “draw” a graphical model of the required software with my mouse, but the actual code gets written by my tool. Apart from a decrease in development costs, the most important things for my customers are the precision and predictability of the results and, in the medium term, the ability to modify and extend the software, and to incorporate these changes into existing structures.
How do your customers benefit from these custom solutions? And how do the benefits stack up against the costs?
I use a simple optimization strategy in my work that computer scientists refer to as “Amdahl’s law” , which is encapsulated in the phrase: “Make the common case fast!”. Software is really good at performing repetitive tasks. So the first benefit of my applications is often a reduction in the fixed costs associated with employees who had been maintaining the Excel tables “on the side”. The software also reduces the error rate, since it is very reliable at performing routine tasks with complex data manipulations.
Another benefit is that the software increases satisfaction and motivation within the team. It takes care of the boring, routine tasks, freeing up the experts to concentrate on their proper work where they get to use their own special expertise. This means they often see the development of the software as a sign that they are valued, especially because the eventual users are directly involved in the development process.
I always aim for the software to pay for its development costs within one year. My tool allows me to provide custom software for the same price as standard software. And as well as asking “What do you want to achieve?”, I also always ask “What do you really need from the software to achieve it?”. I sometimes surprise my customers by telling them it’s not worth implementing certain functions because they only use them three times a month. In many projects, however, it’s not just about the medium-term monetary perspective. Strategic challenges are also important – for example if a company’s growth is held back because inefficient processes and a shortage of skilled personnel mean that it has to turn down orders.
How have your customers’ requirements changed over time? And what current challenges are you helping businesses with?
My Steinbeis Enterprise celebrates its tenth anniversary this year and you’re right, the projects have changed a lot over the past decade. In the early days, it was often simply a case of converting Excel-based data storage systems to web applications that would ideally match the original as closely as possible.
But now, the software increasingly handles complex processes and data analyses. The applications analyze the relevant tasks, carry them out semi-automatically, and produce overviews that support management accounting and general management decision-making. This more complex functionality often comes about during existing projects when the customer has seen what custom software can do for them. But new “greenfield” projects are also getting more ambitious.
For instance, I’m currently developing a data analysis tool for the German subsidiary of the Swiss company V-ZUG AG. By processing sales data from different ERP systems and other sources, the tool is able to display trends at a glance. This helps managers and sales reps to make evidence-based decisions. In another sub-project, we created a process control tool for planning and running events. But despite this extensive, complex functionality, the custom solution developed from scratch is still much cheaper than customizing the existing standard software.
You’ve carried out many different projects over the years. Which ones have really stuck in your memory and why?
The software support we’ve provided for bwcon GmbH’s funded projects covers the entire spectrum of project characteristics. We started in 2018 by replacing the Excel-based monthly working hours documentation with a web application that also manages background data on contracts and absences and generates a PDF document for signature. Over the course of several iterations, we have added multi-client capability for services, monthly time scheduling for individual employees, and an interface to the DocuWare DMS. The most recent upgrade enables annual budget and working time planning.
The biggest advance in automation involves the management of the state of Baden-Württemberg’s EXI startup vouchers with Steinbeis Headquarters. The original 2015 version essentially just transferred the Excel file to a web version. Now, the software for the current EXI-Plus program provides detailed support for all relevant processes, from applications to documentation and billing of individual consulting services.
cooltecc energy gmbh & co. kg’s servicing software for ventilation systems took us out of the office clean room. The technicians provide a graphic description of how the individual components are configured on a tablet while they are right next to the unit and carry out the service using fixed checklists. When they are finished, they stick a barcode on so that when the next service comes round, the software already knows the unit’s layout. Even the die-hard hands-on technicians in the team love it.
Contact
Dr. Holger Gast (interviewee)
Steinbeis Entrepreneur
Steinbeis Consulting Center for Agile Development of Information Systems (Freilassing)