Building an OSS piggybank with scoreboard pressure

“The gameplan tells what you want to happen, but the scoreboard tells what is happening.”
John C Maxwell

Over the years, I’ve found it interesting that most of the organisations I’ve consulted to have significant hurdles for a new OSS to jump through to get funded (the gameplan), but rarely spend much time on the results (the scoreboard)… apart from the burndown of capital during the implementation project.

From one perspective, that’s great for OSS implementers. With less accountability, we can move straight on to the next implementation and not have to justify whether our projects are worth the investment. It allows us to focus on justifying whether we’ve done a technically brilliant implementation instead.

However, from the other perspective, we’re short-changing ourselves if we’re not proving the value of our projects. We’re not building up the credits in the sponsor bank ahead of the inevitable withdrawals (ie when one of our OSS projects goes over time, budget or functionality is reduced to bring in time/budget). It’s the lack of credits that make sponsors skeptical of any OSS investment value and force the aforementioned jumping through hoops.

One of our OSS’s primary functions is to collect and process data – to be the central nervous system for our organisations. We have the data to build the scoreboards. Perhaps we just don’t apply enough creativity to proving the enormous value of what our OSS are facilitating.

Do you ever consider whether you’re on the left or right side of this ledger / scoreboard?

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