What is the 4.0 Industry

Industry 4.0* – also popular as the Fourth Industrial Revolution – is an expression that includes the technologies for automation and data processing, and uses concepts of cyber-physical systems, IoT (Internet of Things) and Cloud Computing. Its focus is on improving efficiency and productivity.

* Defined by Wikipedia.org

What does my business have to do with that?

Well, if your business is not originally dedicated to these fields, that’s your challenge to discover. However, know that most businesses will be able to take advantage of opportunities from offering services that use these technologies. If you don’t want to be surpassed by competitors, you must stay aware of how you can apply them to your business. Leave orthodoxies behind, and offer services that are up to date with the digital age. Use GitScrum to create a project for your 4.0 transition – this will help you plan, implement, test and release changes for good.

Cyberphysical systems opportunities

• creation and improvement of hardware for service providers;
• work on the integration of devices, apps and (urban/home) appliances;
• build middleware (the “bridge” between hardware and software).

Cloud computing opportunities

• offer safe storage, privacy and protection for clients;
• build cross-functional teams and collaborate together, on clients’ projects and your own;
• build your own project management tool, with your brand, and assist your clients, with workspaces to manage their projects.

IoT (Internet of Things) opportunities

• build robotics projects for home automation and the optimization of public/shareable spaces;
• develop apps to integrate household appliances, smart speakers, smartwatches,
• develop accessories, apps and routines to help people with disabilities, and the elderly;
• improve the experience inside educational institutions.

How can I plan and implement 4.0 projects with GitScrum?

1. Review your niche, product(s) portfolio and target buyer persona

This doesn’t mean abandoning your present clients. Just consider looking up information on trends about how consumer habits and tribe behavior are changing. Even if you think you know them, try to identify the gradual changes that might bring influence to your business.

2. Strategic Plan – identify potential new product/service

After you collect some initial research from the web and serious survey institutes, you can do your yearly strategic plan with your team.

You can use GitScrum Mind Mapping to run your business SWOT analysis, listing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Consider the data you got from your research, relating them to what your business can offer. List what you can enable your business to offer in the short term, and which companies you should partner with, to improve your capacity.

3. Collaborate with Clients

Prepare your business to offer services, relate and collaborate with clients cloud-based. Do you think you need to develop a project management tool for your company from zero? How expensive would that be? There’s a way better idea: with GitScrum White Label, you can customize your project management tool, replacing the platforms’ logo with your own brand. Therefore, you can offer an exclusive brandy support environment for all your clients. There, you will present your projects to them, exchange comments, receive feedback and return your outputs much faster.

Forget communicating with clients with an endless stack of emails and instant messages on important works. Keep your projects’ requests and Documents recorded inside themselves, much more organized, so both you and your clients can check them any time.

4. Manage User Needs

If you are seeking new potential services you could offer, there’s nothing better to do than investigate users’ needs. GitScrum User Stories are a smart feature for you to organize all the data you collect from end-users (customers) and employees, regarding their experience, wishes and expectations on your brand. You can also manage User Story Priorities with GitScrum, so you can establish prioritization criteria.

Anyone in your team can write User Stories. Their origin can be customers’ contact forms, visits, or phone calls. Besides checking the demands for small increments, you will be aware of more impacting changes and opportunities to create new products and services to meet users’ needs.

5. Create team Sprints

Once you define new products or services you will work with, list the next goals and tasks your team must dedicate to, focusing on developing and testing. Encourage your team members and track their progress with GitScrum Sprints.

Sprints are time sessions of tasks you associate with goals in a project, so it’s perfect when you want to improve processes, develop a new product and deliver innovation.

6. Hold your Project Accountable with Time Tracking

Like any business, you need to know exactly the value of each task your team does, to reach profitability. It makes part of building new products and services. With GitScrum Time Tracking, you can do several tests to make sure you have a minimum viable product (MVP), by tracking the time your team takes for each development stage.

7. Validate New Idea(s)

No matter how brilliant your idea is, remember that, in the business world, an idea is not worth much, until it’s validated. But what does that mean? That means it was already sold and appreciated by a significant number of people. Preferably, it means you could already conquer a nice percentage of recurring clients because your product is something you can sell more times to the same people. That saves you a ton of effort on sales.

Are you considering seeking investment from venture capital or another source for an innovative, high-tech product or service in your business? Consider these aspects before you go on. Follow our hints to validate your product with GitScrum first.

8. Seek the Records and Patents of your innovations

Remember that, just like you, there are thousands of people creating products and services daily. Competitors also interview customers. And, worse, big retailers are not merciful when they want to beat small businesses, replacing their services on large scale pretty fast.

So, if you really develop an innovative product, make sure that records and patents are a priority for you. Create a project in GitScrum to monitor their progress. Depending on the niche you work in, you might need several licenses. Make sure you won’t miss any assignments about them and be ready to compete for all business opportunities in time.

You can monitor them weekly with GitScrum Gantt Charts.

9. Do crowdsourcing with a Public Project.

After you are protected by patents, you can go beyond user interviews. You can create a public project for crowdsourcing purposes. This can be a great branding action, promoting your product. Furthermore, it can help you improve the product(s), based on users’ feedback and interactions.

Discover more about the interaction of each target persona with your brand, make adjustments and be responsive to the audience. That way you will be working cloud-based and enabled to deliver better services in any area.

10. Invite investors, counselors and partners to collaborate with you.

Don’t you ever think that it’s bad to ask for help? On the contrary, it’s something well seen in the business world. Much better than moving in the wrong direction, asking for the help of experts shows you are smart and committed. GitScrum is the perfect tool for you to do that. Besides your brandy White Label interface, invite qualified guest members and use the main collaborative feature:

GitScrum Board is your modern version of Kanban, where you will create projects, and manage their progress. Include tasks under the status stages, and allow team members to update them, moving them forward to the next column, as they finish. So, at any time, you and guest members (partners and counselors) will be able to check which tasks were accomplished by each worker, and the pending ones.

Using this method will help you to:

• obtain quick, objective feedback from experts in Tasks;
• demonstrate commitment with developing excellence;
• show transparency, because you will open some info about your company;
• attract partners and build reliability before them;
• learn from experienced professionals.

As you see, there are many 4.0 opportunities for attentive entrepreneurs. Don’t miss the chance to be one of them. Manage your business and relate to your clients with GitScrum!