The quick guide:
How to get started with your IoT project
If you've chosen to read this post, there's a good chance you're already up-to-date on what IoT entails and why it has the potential to be incredibly value-adding for your business. Great! If you're not completely up-to-date on this particular topic, you should consider starting by reading our post: ”What is IoT? An introduction to one of todays most revolutionary technologies”.
Time to read: 12 minutes
Subject: Guide to IoT
Have you read it? Perfect. Then you're ready to learn how to get your own IoT project off the ground. It's easy to get started with an IoT project, start testing things and gathering data. On the other hand, it takes a lot of work before you have a product that is ready and deployed to the end user. In return, we promise you that you and your business will most likely experience how much value the right IoT implementation can bring to your business.
How to approach an IoT project: 8 questions, you need to ask yourself, before beginning.
Starting your first IoT project? It might seem like a lot to take in, and we won't lie - it is. However, in our experience, the more you can break down the process into steps or stages, the easier it is to get started with your IoT project and, more importantly, to get off to a good start.
The biggest mistake we see our customers make is to launch an IoT project before some important decisions have been made about your project. For example, if you don't get the purpose of your project right from the start, you risk spending a lot of time and resources launching something that you eventually find out you don't need anyway. This clarification of the project's scope and purpose is something we at Iterator IT are always happy to help you with.
Are you ready to get started with your own IoT project? Here are our eight steps to get you started - enjoy.
1) Organizational clarification
Before starting your IoT project, it is important to clarify why you want to work with IoT and what the goal of the project is. Based on this, you should also have clarified what it is we want to solve and how the company wants to approach it. After all, it is important to clarify that there is support for an IoT project in the organisation from the management, which must ensure the economy, and that the company has the necessary skills and resources.
Ask yourself ...
- What do I want to solve with IoT?
- Is IoT the right solution to the problem?
- Do we have the skills and resources in the organisation?
2) Find your IoT-vision
Once you've determined that IoT is indeed the way forward for you, it's time to find your IoT vision. This step can be frustrating for those who just want to get started. But it's incredibly important to be clear about what your IoT vision is, so you have a strong foundation to base your future and more technical decisions on.
Ask yourself ...
- Where am I going with my IoT project? (where will we be in 5 years?)
- What do I want to use my IoT data for?
- What KPIs will I use to measure the success of my IoT project?
- How can we monetize our IoT project?
- How many organisational resources are we willing to devote to achieve our vision?
3) Build your business case
Once you've clarified and answered the eight questions in steps one and two, you're ready to get specific and make your business case. There is not always a consensus on what a business case is or what it should contain, but the vast majority of companies look at a business case as a powerful tool that can be used to support decision-making and project planning within the company.
This step is particularly important if you are not a decision-maker in the company, as it can help convince the right people that your IoT vision is worth pursuing. Indeed, in many companies, the big business decisions are often made based on the good business case.
A business case can look very different depending on your company. However, as a general rule, a good business case should take into account some specific elements.
The good business case contains the following:
- The purpose of the project: Clearly identify the relevant business problem that your case will solve. That is: What is the case for and who is the target audience?
- Project delimitations: Make it clear what is included in this case and what is not.
- Economy: How will you finance the project and how big a budget will you need?
- Project objectives: A clarification of the objectives you want to achieve with the project.
- Financial results: What financial results do you expect from this project? Remember to be realistic and set specific and measurable KPIs.
- Non-financial results: Identify the results that cannot be measured in financial terms. For example, improved job satisfaction, higher customer satisfaction, etc. These are also important results, even if they cannot necessarily be measured directly in terms of money.
- Assessment of results and risks: A realistic assessment of the likelihood of the objectives and outcomes presented, and the conditions that need to be in place to achieve them. Here it is also important to consider which risk factors should be given special attention during the project.
Recommendation of actions: A recommendation of what actions should be taken based on your business case - also preferably by whom and when they should be taken.
If your knowledge of IoT is limited, it can be complicated to set up the good business case yourself. Therefore, it can be a great advantage to get professional help in this step. IoT experts like us at Iterator It can draw on previous experience and knowledge of all aspects of an IoT project and use this to build the good business case.
In fact, with professional help, it doesn't take more than a single workshop over an afternoon to build a good business case.
4) Assessment: what does your IoT project require?
Once the good business case has been set up, it's time to get more technical. Now you need to make the more concrete decisions about your IoT hardware and software.
Roughly speaking, an IoT project consists of three parts: 1) one or more IoT devices that are connected to the internet and collect data or control your machine and 2) an IoT platform that communicates with the IoT devices, processes the data and stores it. The third and final part is a user interface where the user can gain insight into their data or where it is possible to send commands back to the devices. There are a countless number of options for how you choose to set up your IoT system, and the choices you make here will impact the rest of your IoT project going forward.
To make it as simple as possible, we split these decisions into two:
4.1 Choice of hardware
The first thing you need to know is what physical thing you want to retrieve data from and why. This will determine the type of IoT sensor (hardware) you need. For example, if you need to monitor the use of machines in your factory, the temperature in a cold room, the routes of your freight trucks or the movements of customers in your store, then you need very different types of IoT devices or hardware.
Once you know what kind of data you want to collect and from where, you can start going through the many IoT sensors on the market. There are now so many off-the-shelf IoT sensors that you can find one that can measure most things. However, there is also the option of having your own IoT hardware developed. The advantage of custom hardware is that you have much more flexibility in what data your device can collect, as well as the ability to build on this if you want to expand your IoT project later. Producing many devices yourself can also result in a lower device price because there is no premium to pay to other manufacturers - and the devices you produce only need to cover your exact use case. On the other hand, it's also a lot more expensive to develop your own hardware developed rather than just finding an off-the-shelf one that suits your project.
4.2 Choice of connectivity
Once you've got your hardware sorted, it's time to decide how to connect your IoT device to the network. Typical connections include Bluetooth, WiFi, mobile networks (3G, 4G, 5G), NB-IOT and LoRaWAN, and each type of connection has its pros and cons. Therefore, there are also several considerations that play into your choice of connection. Below you should consider:
- The price of the connection
- Power consumption
- The connection distance (how far in physical distance the device has to send data)
- The bandwidth (it depends on how much data needs to be sent over the given type of connection).
So the have a lot of possibilities for IoT connectivity, which is why it's vital that you do a thorough analysis of your connectivity needs now and in the future before making a decision. Once you have chosen your connection, it is not easy to switch to another one.
5) MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and POC (Proof-of-Concept)
When you get to this point, you'll have the big picture of your IoT project.
But a wise man once said: "Once you've spent the money to develop something, well, the money is spent. Don't build a space rocket from scratch" – Casper Hougaard Jensen, CEO, Iterator IT.
And what does that mean? It basically means that there's no need to dive headfirst into a huge IoT project. Instead, we work with, and recommend you work with, proof-of-concept and MVP.
When speaking of minimum viable productwe're talking about getting to the core of your product. You can't and shouldn't start with everything at once. So find the absolute core of your IoT project and start there - one step at a time.
Similarly, we always recommend that you start with proof-of-concept. Do you have a vision to install 10,000 sensors in all your machines? Why not start by setting up 10 sensors, making a few measurements and a dashboard, and assessing whether it's even possible to get valid data out of your IoT devices. It's much easier to change a wrong choice of IoT sensors if you've only set up 10 than if you've set up 10,000.
6) Development and scaling up of the project
It's one thing to get your IoT project off to a good start, but it's also important that everyone involved in the project agrees on how it should evolve. Typically, we talk about projects being managed through one of the following methods.
Agile projects is typically characterised by continuously optimizing your project flow, depending on what you believes adds the most value to the project and the business at the time. In agile projects, you start by planning the start of the project. Then you start developing the most important (highest priority) part of the product (MVP). Then you assess, test and evaluate, and the process starts "all over again" with planning the next part of the project. The project cycle is therefore more flexible and the continuous optimization means that the right solutions are delivered more quickly.
The agile methodology also talks about scrum, where work is planned in so-called sprints, typically lasting 1-4 weeks at a time.
The traditional waterfall projects are more plan-driven. That is, you want to describe and plan your entire project at the beginning of the project - before you start. This approach can be problematic, as it can be difficult to oversee an entire project from start to finish before you have even started. However, it has the advantage that you are less likely to start something that you will not need afterwards.
The advantage of the waterfall model is that it is often easier for the rest of the business to make demands on the project. It requires less organisational adaptation, and is easier to understand.
7) Continuous maintenance
Finally, it is important to include continuous maintenance in your consideration for an IoT project. This consideration should be seen as being two-fold:
1. First of all, think about who you can call if something goes wrong along the way. Do you have a business partner or perhaps a department in charge of day-to-day operations?
2. Next, you need to get an overview of the ongoing hosting costs that will come. Your technical skills can help you estimate this.
8) In-house project or outsourcing?
Now you've been through the seven steps we at Iterator IT recommend all our customers go through when launching their first successful IoT project.
You may have read each step and thought "easy, peasy - I got this", or maybe you've been thinking "this is overwhelming". What you thought about the first seven steps has an impact on whether the best solution for you is to develop your IoT project in-house, or whether the best solution is to get help from outside IoT experts instead.
There can be many advantages to managing an IoT project in-house, provided you have the skills to do so. However, it is only an advantage if you are well enough equipped to answer all the questions and make all the choices that you have read about in this post. If you're not, an outsourcing solution with expert help will be the best option for you.
If you choose to get outside help, it's important to be aware of one thing in particular: You must own your data and your code. When you launch an IoT project, it has the potential to become an essential part of your business. Therefore, you should also always make sure that you own the data and code that are at the core of the project. That way, you always have the option to pull out of a collaboration and, for example, continue working on the project yourself or with another supplier.
Do you want to talk about your IoT needs?
At Iterator IT, we're experts in end-to-end IoT solutions, and we'll help you get started with your IoT project. Contact us today to learn more about your opportunities for a strong IoT partnership with us.
Iterator IT
Iterator IT is one of Denmark's leading IoT development companies, specializing in Industry 4.0. We are well-versed in the complex business models that exist in the industry. Over the years, we have assisted industrial companies in developing their Industry 4.0 projects, not just in terms of software development, but also by examining the various elements of the company from the ground up until we find a concrete use case that can create value for the company. In some cases, we have also been the primary driving force that has brought the project to fruition in collaboration with a project manager within the company.
We build the software for the project, including the cloud solution and visual elements for platforms or applications. With our skilled and experienced collaborators who have developed hardware over the years, we are capable of offering end-to-end IoT solutions.
If you have any doubts about what Industry 4.0 can do for you, please feel free to contact us either via our contact form here or call our CEO Casper at +45 31 39 05 69
