Business model

At the Overture workshop held in Cyprus on 7 November 2016, a session was conducted with a focus on defining a business model for Overture technology, using the "Business Model Canvas" approach. From Wikipedia: "The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management and lean startup template for developing new or documenting existing business models. It is a visual chart with elements describing a firm's or product's value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. It assists firms in aligning their activities by illustrating potential trade-offs. The Business Model Canvas was initially proposed by Alexander Osterwalder based on his earlier work on Business Model Ontology."

This page is (at least initially) intended to reflect the results of the session.

Results of the brainstorm on answering the "How can we?" questions

How can we identify the group of stakeholders that best fit the Overture technology?

• Formal methods with focus on safety critical systems
• Embedded systems developers
• Host a wider audience of interests, contact a range of different stakeholders to e large interest
• Develop a presence in industry forums, associations, chambers of commerce
• Network (a lot!) more.
• Ask. So we have to find a forum where many potential users will notice, and feel free to respond (not sure where!). Perhaps industry groups?
• See process improvement community, especially.
• Survey existing success stories to find common traits. Are they mainly ‘friends’/insiders?
• Tailor the technology to specific stake holders we wish to target, e.g. Overture 4….
• Find existing/similar technologies that are doing well and identify/target those stake holders.
• Study users of comparable technologies , e.g. Z and B/Event-B.
• Perform a market survey and define product/market combinations
• Identify markets where the technology might provide the highest gain
• Look for stories of problems
• Show stories for each community (automotive, quality assurance, testing, agile, etc.)
• Find such groups from the area of successful case studies, and ask them.

How can we convince stakeholders that using Overture technology is really beneficial to them?

• Hands-on seminar to experience the technology.
• Send an Overture engineer and show them how to solve a problem.
• Overture to their business specifically -> stackoverflow!!!
• Show an “Overture success story”.
• Engage with potential users on a “free consulting” basis to show what can be done.
• Develop a comprehensive set of industry success stories so that most businesses can see an application by “people like us” (in the same domain, same sort of business, etc.)
• EV projects with industrial partners. One at the time but we should aim for more than one project.
• Be very clear about what problem(s) we’re solving and stick to that message.
• Show benefits with a case study that is closely related to their needs.
• Show it has an active community.
• Charge money for it. Companies may be wary of FOSS software as being less well maintained, higher risk, etc. [Comment added: that is not going to help. We have 10+ years of evidence that paying is not needed.]
• Convince them that their competitors are using Overture or similar techniques.
• Show them real examples of profit/reputation increase due to Overture.
• Present some of the successful applications of using Overture/VDM speciality in an industrial setting.
• Demonstrate how well the tool works for building prototypes.
• Tailor the sales pitch to the specifics of the problem of that specific stakeholder because everybody makes the claim that they can help. Be specific!
• Get involved in project and show the benefits (easier said than done!)
• Ensure to make systems safety and correctly.
• Only not logically: tell them that famous people admire and rivals are using.

How can we break out of our own inner circle to expand to the “industrial audience”?

• See question “How can we appeal to industry”?
• Change the description into even buzzword e.g. Amazon said that as “exhaustively testable pseudo-code”
• To show some successful case studies [agree]
• Collaborate around their industry needs, focus on case studies + solve problems using Overture
• Open source projects that “use” VDM + awareness of what is available.
• Get out more! Develop a cohort of people who are able to meet and engage with businesses big and small (not clear how you pay for this)
• Get venture capital????
• Stop all the geeky stuff about “formal methods” and CPSs – use language most people understand [Agree!]
• Make cooperation with companies where we develop using Overture. Our pay is knowledge and papers.
• More EV projects with industrial partners, but in a continuous way so they do not only do one case study.
• Offer something for free – perhaps consultancy and training for pilot projects
• Use existing industry contacts to spread the message, if experience was successful.
• Industry body recommendations?
• Free trial consultation.
• Make it to news headlines as the technology used to do X for Y company/organisation.
• Collaborate with comparable workshops – F-IDE.
• Actively discuss follow-up with INTO-CPS IFG members.

How can we increase the value of the Overture product, i.e. determine which additional features are most urgently needed?

• So that the features allow the industrial practice to proceed in one step forward (not jumping and dreamy, but useful and applicable)
• Code generation (to programming languages used in industry)
• Model checking
• Find a representative group of users and ask for feedback. Monitor bugs and enhancement requests.
• Use it ourselves and realise what is needed!
• Make strong and clear connections to popular notations and tools
• Find out what successful “products” in this are advertise – are there USPs we need to adopt (to stop them being USPs of “competitors”)
• Look at what features academic funders will/might pay to add
• Support the implementation technologies that the industry uses
• Talk to users and customers; what are the challenges for the next generation of products
• By using it and identifying the missing features
• By extending it to include the users’ side of systems
• Quick and easy Instruction Guides, easy to use
• Survey for the relevant industry about their needs
• Close industry contact + determine which industry sectors to focus on
• Road mapping sessions, to help determine business motivations and direction
• Lively community, forums, etc. regular contact + good relations with industry
• Select a target market (or small set of them) and undertake a systematic survey (workshops, road mapping, etc.) – but we have to make sure the participants get something out of it
• Refactoring, quick look-up, as to completions: the stuff other IDEs have.

How can we make use of social media to reach our target audience?

• LinkedIn have
• Answer questions on SO/FB/twitter instead of mailing list or as a supplement
• If we had followers on e.g. LinkedIn we should do screen casts where we solve common computer science / industrial challenges with up for the channel.
• Start an argument. Make a provocative statement about (say) agile development and offer an alternative to criticize
• Go viral (impossible to predict), see “make news headlines” suggestion.
• Think about what social media friendly content we could provide (eye catching, short, snappy, sexy, cool)
• We should post pictures on twitter when we attend conferences/workshops, usually the conference will repost
• How about start using it actively? i.e. learn from modern “conferences”
• Slide share
• Be social, not “full on”!
• By providing easy to digest evidence of success stories on media channels (although it should be considered if this is the best medium to target “clients”)
• Get the power of influential persons [agree] e.g. in Japan the president of ChangeVision (aseak) has a lot of fans (blind belief on his tweets) on seminars/books
• Write some articles by some key persons on some magazines
• Use work-related social media, e.g. like using LinkedIn, having a group for the tool
• Keep noisy consistently [agree] most important aspect of social media, lively community + relatable
• Make some open source projects that use VDM
• Pay somebody to actually do it properly – this isn’t a job for amateurs.
• Address cool projects that people have heard about (block chain, drones, space stuff?) not water tanks and line following robots, and talk about them a lot.

How can we integrate Overture technology in an agile environment?

• Use code generators! And testing frameworks
• CI server for VDM specs
• Educate industry on how this can be done
• No idea! We need to run case studies or experimental applications in order to get good, practise-based guidelines together
• By integrating Overture with requirements + traceability management “tools” and processes.
• Test parsers for build servers and build tools in general [Remark by other person: we have this for Jenkins]
• Jenkins VDM Job type
• Agree with simple CI integration (Jenkins) – “Test” the design and code at same time and “show” equivalence, so you know about breakages quickly.
• Come up with a new methodology that is based around Overture. Show it with a case study
• Clarify exit criteria for [Overture based development?]
• Generate test specifications for test driven development
• Provide case studies in “Agile” development with Overture – how are they different/the same to Agile e.g. software developments
• Extend the tools with Agile supporting features? (whatever they are)
• Give examples of how Overture supports agile development
• Emphasize any tool features that support this: DSE, synthesis, etc.
• Do we think that agile is a good idea at all? Are we trying to be fashionable?
• Not sure agile is the best approach for safety critical systems
• Connect with BDD/ADD frameworks (e.g. cucumber); show it is strong for getting customer feedback
• Describe small models first! But it seems difficult to combine them

How can we make a video that is appealing, looks professional and is convincing?

• Appeal to the “pain” of industry
• Show real-life examples of how Overture has been successful
• Describe how Overture will help specifically
• Get it done professionally (don’t do it ourselves) [Comment added: yes. Lighting, voiceover, graphics, editing e.g. COMPASS rival(?) video, Neopost paper path)
• Take “famous” examples and implement them in Overture. E.g. Calculator, ponding it with semaphores, Towers of Hanoi.
• Agree we need professional production
• Several short videos with a simple message better
• Talking people better than voice-over tool demos
• Interviews with people? Marcel, Nico, Bert Bos etc. like Crescendo book chapter
• Consult with media professionals / public relation
• Identify “good” videos of other tools/services.
• Bu showing the whole development (using Overture) process all the way from requirements to working software (Comment added: Boring!)
• Hire a professional for making many short vids
• Make sure we get someone to make a TED talk
• I have to agree with hiring professional help
• The target audience will have to be clearly defined as that affects what will be appealing
• By showing impacts on people’s lives
• Words and demonstrations by famous people/company (respected engineering communities)
• By showing it to show attractive person
• Hire a professional that can make a higher-level description of the gains, e.g. come up with buzzwords too.

How can we use existing material that we already have in the most optimal way?

• Be more active on social media. Actively push (in an appealing way, not obnoxious) to community at large
• By using it to provide evidence that the tools would provide a concrete gain, to potential customer.
• Model case of deep (not our case studies) industrial application “Sony Felicia used, then we need to check!”. More of this.
• Making it part of a home page with tutorial
• Publish ePub at Amazon
• Make material appealing, easy to find, easy to use.
• Manuals and texts as well as tools – we should evangelise outside the formal methods community.
• Translate materials into other languages (comments added: not to Dk. Other: Chinese? Other: “I think English is fine”).
• Develop demonstrators that are on a significant level of complexity (not just textbooks examples) Comment added: existing material?
• Small online guides: this is how you add a [unreadable]. This is how you run the model.
• Make sure it is easy to access and presented in a “quality” way.
• Offer/create a set of patterns for modelling common problems. Comment added: existing?
• Make a set of technology process patterns
• Video presentations of examples that are slick/professional and offer the benefits of VDM, success stories
• Advertise Overture student projects more

Value Proposition Canvas (PVC)

Gain creators

• Open support community
• Robust tool support
• Version management: continuous integration for specification/design
• Give them highly functional tools
• Code generation
• Code generation reduces code writing + maintainability
• More prototypes + design space exploration = confidence
• Soundness (equals guarantees)
• Consistency of design artefacts

Pain relievers

• System abstract modelling
• Abstraction
• The first choice to start formal (easy to try)

Gains

• Shorter feedback loop on designs
• Reputation high availability of formally verified or checked systems
• Improved communication
• Real-time systems
• Safety critical systems
• Good to clarify requirements and communication between stake holders
• System realisation (code generation)
• Formal technology for agile working
• Expect lower maintenance costs
• Deeper understanding of requirements
• Validating change requests/impact analysis
• Optimize designs = better product
• Early results (prototyping)
• Prototype for customer validation
• Prove properties

Pains

• Too hard to understand complex systems
• Skills shortage (system engineering is not the same as software engineering)
• Increasing complexity
• Legacy versus innovation
• Reputation damage
• Can’t deliver
• Low quality
• Personnel turn over (knowledge management)
• Implicit assumptions, not validated, unspoken
• Lack of tools
• Unclear, changing requirements
• Expensive to correct implementation (if informally specified)
• Software always late
• Difficulty of determining the right next product
• Definition and discussion on right product with customers
• Unpredictability
• Too slow compared to competition (time to market)
• Different disciplines working together
• Price erosion
• Technology adoption
• Change way of working is difficult
• Cost of formal specification may be high
• Why use VDM

Business Model Canvas

Key partners

• Controllab Products
• Modelica
• Eclipse foundation
• EU Commission
• EPSRC
• IPA
• Kyosu University

Key activities

• Tool development
• Release management
• Support

Key resources

• Phd./students
• Volunteers
• PR/sales people
• Videographer

Cost structure

• Website
• Build servers
• Hardware
• Staff

Revenue streams

• EU projects
• Research grants
• Crowd funding
• Selling support(?)
• Consultancy(?)

Customer relationships

• Online
• Academic conferences
• Industrial trade shows

Channels

• Mailing lists
• Stack overflow
• Overture website
• Twitter ☹
• Online teaching material

Customer segments

• University courses
• Industry projects (which industry? Existing? New?)
• Building automation
• Automotive + Transport
• Smart agriculture
• Embedded systems
• Space
• Aircraft design + build
• Defence
• Medical sector
• Safety/reliability
• Real-time systems
• General software producers
• System developers (integrators)
• System integrators who only write specifications to outsource

Customer jobs

• Make profit
• Maintain/improve reputation
• Build products or systems
• Reach agreement
• Problem understanding
• Outsourcing, supply management
• Development and testing