Six blind men and an OSS elephant

The concept of digital transformation can be massive… or it can stem from something much smaller.

In digital transformation, there’s a mantra of simplify then transform. That makes perfect sense, in alignment with, “The chess-board analogy,” but often overlooked.

But there’s another simplification perspective to take. Let’s take the 6 blind men and the elephant parable into consideration. Each of the six blind men gets a different perception of what they’re interacting with.

In the world of OSS, the blind men are like the 6 (or more) different departments – operations, business, IT, sales, marketing, executive, etc. Each interacts with the OSS elephant and each has a different experience with it.

The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) or sand-pit environment is one great strategy to building momentum in large organisations. Identify something small that is at the heart of the solution – a place where all parties interact and get their chance to touch the new elephant. Then build something at that central point that presents something that’s encouraging / enticing to all who interact with it.

For a start, the cloud represents an environment that isn’t “owned” by any of the business units and isn’t bound up in all the security or other checks that slow delivery down. Secondly, with an MVP ensure you’re touching simulated components inside the cloud rather than exposed components inside the business (think “the implications of a handshake“). Thirdly, make it a sand-pit – segregated from production (and potentially from each of the six blind men) then encourage interactive play.