The OSS Think Big juxtaposition

I recently saw the advertisement below:

I’ve clipped only the last 10 seconds because that was the part that struck me. The ad is for BHP*, one of the world’s largest miners. The mining industry thinks in long-term projects because it takes many years to deliver results – for exploration, planning, approvals, for the infrastructure to be built and operationalised, etc.

Mining is “only” the process of pulling natural resources out of the ground, but despite all our complexities, mining projects tend to be far more complex than for OSS. The decade-long duration of projects means that technologies that were originally included in plans frequently become obsolete mid-flight and have to be re-planned. That means major contracts also need to be obsoleted and re-planned mid-flight. Work-force management has a completely different scale than for OSS.

Mining thinks in time-frames of decades. OSS transformations are planned in time-frames of years. OSS delivery, especially Agile deliveries, often only think in quarters (or much, much less).

In OSS, do we really Think Big?

But there’s a twist on this question. In the rare cases when we do think big, are we constraining ourselves by then following into the “deliver big” mindset too? In OSS, I’ve always felt that we deliver most efficiently when very small numbers of very clever people group together.

So there’s the juxtaposition with the clip above – Think Big… Think Small.

When you’re thinking of OSS roadmaps, what’s your thinking time-frame?

* For disclosure, I’m not an investor in BHP to my knowledge, but perhaps my super fund is.

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