ONES decoding: why digitalization is a "super project"

The new crown epidemic is a landmark turning point in the acceleration of digitalization. Because we are not on the Internet, but live on the Internet.

Imagine if there is no Internet, no express delivery, no food delivery, no games, videos, no social platforms, or even online fitness, how can we survive the sudden days of home isolation? In addition, the popularization of remote office and online teaching has allowed people to step out of the real boundary of work and study time and time again.

When the epidemic has pressed the pause button for many things, it has given wings to digitization.

Then, we continue to ask: What is the hard core force behind the acceleration of digitalization?

More and more facts point to an answer: it is software research and development projects in full swing in various industries, like a sea of rivers, and jointly driving the rapid advancement of digitalization-in this sense, digitalization is a huge super software project. .

The R&D management tool company ONES has empowered the software development projects of many companies. It has participated in and witnessed the hard-core era of "software-driven digitalization", and thus has a unique perspective to decode the underlying logic of the "digital super-engineering". The engineer's mind arm himself.

Industrial development of software research and development

Look up the keyword "super engineering" on a search engine, and you will see both high-rise bridges and high-speed railways at the port; both the transportation network and the food supply-all are tangible and relevant The construction of the "Big Mac" system for the national economy and the people's livelihood.

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For example, China has built the world’s largest highway network from scratch; built many of the world’s most technically difficult bridges; built the world’s longest high-speed railway mileage, which is even longer than the total of other regions in the world; On China’s coastline, seven of the world’s top ten ports in terms of throughput are located in China.

These are all transformations of the atomic world. At the same time, in the bit world, the "engineering drama" of software development is being staged vigorously. The various conveniences of digital life and work that we now enjoy all come from large-scale software development projects.

Nowadays, the software developed by enterprises is no longer a single tool, but a system—a certain scene in the real world, or some complex logic, is implemented into a software system. In other words, the software requirements themselves have become complex, requiring a lot of manpower to participate in collective development.

At the same time, because of the progress of programming languages, programmers no longer need to think about memory issues, no longer need to face garbage collection, pointers and other "trivial things", programmers only need to write logic-in this way, software production changes It's relatively easy.

As a result, software development becomes simple in production, but becomes complicated in management. In addition, people themselves will have biological limitations, including limited expression skills and inefficiency in multi-person communication. Then, how to manage people in the software development process has become a big project.

Previously, in software development, many companies may fall into a misunderstanding, thinking that as long as they spend money on people, they can accomplish any project. In other words, treat the project as a simple arithmetic problem: if a project requires 12 man-months, then 4 people can complete the work in 3 months; if the manpower is increased to 6 people, then the work can be completed in 2 months. The construction period is shortened by 1/3.

However, anyone who has been involved in software development projects knows that the opposite is true. The result: the more manpower added, the slower the progress of the project. Because, with more and more people, the division of labor becomes more and more detailed, and the process becomes more and more complex, the amount of communication required between people will explode, and the communication time will be more than the time saved by the division of labor.

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Therefore, similar to the road, bridge, port, high-speed rail and other projects, when the underlying structure design of software development is completed, a large number of engineers are required to implement it through large-scale system organization-this is one of the key points of the modern software industry.

As early as 2015, ONES founder and CEO Wang Yingqi had a cognitive prediction of the "software engineering" trend. "I think software engineering will actually become production and manufacturing, that is to say, the software industry will become one of the representatives of "Made in China"," Wang Yingqi said, software research and development is not scientific research, but a completely industrialized engineering field.

Based on this judgment, Wang Yingqi has a firm cognition: software development requires good management tools. So he founded ONES, an enterprise-level R&D management tool company. "I myself have been doing engineering management for the past ten years, so I have a very clear understanding: when the number of people in a software R&D team reaches a certain size, professional management methods and management tools are needed," said Wang Yingqi, at the same time , Because my founding team is good at making software, so I chose the direction of R&D management with relatively high technical barriers to making products.

It is precisely with a series of practical accumulation that ONES has the engineer's perspective and thinking to observe digitalization.

Engineer's structured thinking

Sheldon, the protagonist of the American drama "The Big Bang Theory", a genius scientist, clearly said that he looked down on his friend Howard. Shelton always criticized Howard's engineers to work dull and creative, because engineers serve the needs of scientists rather than discover them by themselves.

In the past, programmers in the software industry were called "scientists"; now, programmers have become a member of the software engineer group-the definition of software engineer includes product managers, designers, architects, and other related parties. Said that software engineering is the limit of engineering management and comprehensive management methods.

In fact, it is not because scientists have stronger intelligence or higher level, but because of the characteristics of engineering. In this sense, what can respond to "The Big Bang Theory" Sheldon is: the specialty of an engineer is not discovery, but realization.

The main job of a scientist is to explore "what is"; what engineers think about is another aspect, that is, "what can be done", within the limits of natural laws and other factors, exploring what can bring practicality to mankind use.

People gradually reached a consensus: Scientists discover the real world, and engineers realize a possible world.

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Moreover, the thinking of engineers goes beyond the so-called "craftsman spirit." Because craftsmen inherit craftsmanship, and engineers are always thinking about how to turn craftsmanship into craftsmanship—establishing a set of standardized practices and lowering the threshold for human participation, which is craftsmanship.

"Structure or standardization is a typical embodiment of engineers' thinking in terms of digitization." Feng Bin, the co-founder and CTO of ONES, said that structuring is to "clearly define the objects to be managed." For example, unstructured things such as documents are "stuck together" and it is difficult to extract the data from them. .

"If you can't express it numerically, it's difficult to see the overview, and there is no way to perform statistics and other functions." According to Feng Bin, according to ONES's customer practice, unstructured information is unstructured during team collaboration. It will make people blind, because they cannot grasp the completion of the task, the timing of the task, and whether the progress between different teams matches, and so on. "Therefore, the primary goal of structuring is to achieve visualization, which is clear to all managed objects. This is the beginning of order from chaos."

It can be said that in the absence of structure, engineers can see the potential structure from the preliminary concepts and ideas. That is, not only pay attention to the things that are visible, but also the things that are not visible. Engineers should consider how the various elements in the system are connected in terms of logic, time, sequence, and function, and analyze the conditions under which these elements work. Under what conditions does not work.

For example, a questionnaire survey shows that passengers’ expectation is that the new aircraft will reach their destination faster. Then, an aerodynamicist may think that the problem to be solved is how to make the plane fly faster, but the engineer will divide the whole journey into several components, not only to think about the flight process, but also to study how to go to the airport and find There are many factors such as parking space, locating the terminal building, ticket checking, checked baggage, waiting for security check, waiting for the flight and reaching the final destination, and so on.

This is how engineers worry about it until the "structure" appears orderly.

Complex software development

requires professional management tools

There is a newly compiled old story: Facing a bottle filled with half a bottle of water, the optimist said that the bottle is half full; the pessimist said, alas, the bottle is half empty. But the engineer would say that this bottle actually doesn't need to be so big, as long as half of it is enough.

This story is that engineers have a thinking inertia called "optimization"-how to implement a function quickly and economically.

The starting point for optimization is the engineer's clarification of the "demand". It can be said that a complex software development project is like a relay race, and engineers are often the ones who run the second half of the race. Faced with the requirements put forward by all parties, engineers complete the next work according to the requirements. This process is like passing a baton.

In actual software engineering, this handover process will not be smooth, because the needs in the minds of customers or colleagues may be formed in vague ordinary language, and when this demand enters the minds of engineers, it must be transformed into mathematics And scientific terminology-the best way is to solidify the specific functions in the collaboration tool.

ONES provides digital management covering the entire R&D process

"Since we started our business in 2015, we have only done one thing, and at the same time we have built our cognitive barrier: that is, we believe that as long as software is involved, R&D management tools are needed. Looking back now, the acceleration of digitalization has made various companies They have established software teams, and they all need tools-these market needs have supported us in doing the right things in the past few years." Wang Yingqi said, the "demand orientation" of engineer thinking is not only implemented in software R&D management, but also Applied to the big idea of ONES entrepreneurship and innovation.

In just 6 years, ONES has grown into a leading domestic R&D management solution provider, with 8 professional R&D management products running through the entire life cycle of software R&D. In 2020, ONES acquired Tower, a well-known domestic team collaboration tool, and was able to expand its business landscape, achieve "full coverage" from small teams to medium and large teams, and provide one-stop solutions for various project management scenarios to professional R&D management.

At present, ONES’s customers cover many Fortune 500 companies including Xiaomi, China Telecom, Kweichow Moutai, SAIC, China Merchants Fund, Inspur Software, etc.; Tower serves companies including Transsion Holdings, China Resources Innovation and Learning Center, San Francisco The leading companies in various fields such as the Agricultural Group and Yuanjiao have accumulated more than one million teams.

In 2021, ONES completed three consecutive rounds of financing totaling nearly US$100 million in six months. Investors include Wuyuan Capital, Huachuang Capital, Jiayu Capital, XVC, Source Code Capital, SoftBank China Capital, GIC and other well-known domestic and foreign funds. As a result, ONES is not only the company that has received the most financing in the domestic R&D management field, but also set the record for the fastest financing speed in this field in history.

This also means that the capital level has reached a consensus: On the Chinese software R&D and engineering management track, ONES's leading position in the industry has been further consolidated and consolidated.

"ONES is in China today, no matter in terms of product integrity, customer list, technical background, and financing scale, I have confidence to say that we are number one," said Wang Yingqi.

It can be said that software engineers encapsulate all the complexity and give you only a simple interface; ONES focuses on creating "the most difficult management tool", but it allows more and more companies to embark on a light and convenient Software development "Kangzhuang Road".