Passionate About OSS Blog | Passionate About OSS and BSS

Where to work?

"Did you know that 62 percent of employees believe their productivity increases when they work remotely—away from typical office distractions? Yet, only 15 percent say their companies support remote working arrangements" From Microsoft's Work Without Walls whitepaper. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals and co-authors of one of my favourite books, Rework, are currently working on a new book Remote: Office Not Required. I…

08/04/2013 No Comments

New Skills

"Employers need to start rethinking their recruiting process, notably in using sophisticated social network search tools to go spear-fishing for high potential talent, rather than waiting for applications to come across the transom. And, managers need to look for the skills that really matter today in high potential young talent, attributes like cognitive load capacity, adaptability and social media skills. That one kid with the high…

07/04/2013 No Comments

Expensive Professionals

"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur" Red Adair It conservatively takes six months for a Telco or IT expert to become valuable* as an OSS implementer (as opposed to an OSS operator). If you're considering implementation of a new OSS and don't have anyone on your team who has significant OSS implementation experience, it is highly recommended…

06/04/2013 No Comments

What is the right attitude?

"We can change skill levels through training, but we can’t change attitude." Herb Kelleher. Dan Schwabel on Forbes.com asks "Are technical and soft skills less important than attitude?" When it comes to OSS, technical skills are important because there are so many technology elements involved. Technical geniuses are essential for delivering remarkable products and solutions. However, OSS technologies are constantly evolving and each new project is…

05/04/2013 No Comments

What is at your Core?

"You must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it." Martha Beck Every CSP has a vastly different set of requirements from their OSS. Some have non-negotiable requirements that are not relevant to all others. When you're a vendor that services top-end telcos, there aren't many customers available. This leaves you with a dilemma when one of those…

04/04/2013 No Comments

Cool Ideas

"To create cool ideas you have to hang around cool people. Magicians and madmen inspire creative thought not pencil-pushers and bean-counters." Don The Idea Guy Snyder in his 100 Whats of Creativity My first OSS project had more "characters" (Magicians and Madmen perhaps?) than all other projects in my 15+ year career combined. Reunions with team members from that project always bring a torrent of weird…

03/04/2013 No Comments

Brainstorm

"Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas." Keith Sawyer Without realising the statistics/quote above, taken from this page on NewYorker.com, I've always preferred to build a plan for all variants of OSS projects using WBS techniques alone before then brainstorming ideas with others. OSS projects…

02/04/2013 No Comments

How secure is your OctopOSS?

"I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again." Robert S. Mueller, Director of The Federal Bureau of Investigation. OSS the world over hold highly privileged information that needs heavily fortified information security. Moreover, these OSS…

01/04/2013 No Comments

What do they want to know?

"Understanding what people really want to know—and how that differs from what you want to tell them—is a fundamental tenet of sales" Jason Fried. In the same post on INC.com, Jason also explains "I made the discovery that people's reasons for buying things often don't match up with the company's reason for selling them... They thought they were arming us with facts that would impress the…

31/03/2013 No Comments

Integrity

"Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather." John D. MacDonald. So you have found the holy grail of the OSS world and delivered the perfect OSS product. Hats off to you! But you can't stop there can you? Is the data in your OSS perfect? If it is, that's holy grail number two. But you're still…

30/03/2013 No Comments

Where do I start?

"Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything." Napoleon Hill No matter what OSS project, or any project you start, capturing the requirements is the first place to start. The requirements help to identify the guiding vision for what you need to achieve. A project without clear requirements is like a boat…

29/03/2013 No Comments

Reporting is not Communicating

"Reporting is not Communicating. Reporting and communicating are not the same! Sending out information has very little to do with effective communication" Lynda Bourne on Project Accelerator News Communication is a fundamental part of delivering (or operating) an OSS because so many people are impacted. Status reports can be a useful repository of information during project delivery. It should be clearly noted that they are a…

27/03/2013 No Comments

Planned Neglect

"The shorter way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time." Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart In his book, Developing the Leader Within You, John C Maxwell tells the story of a young and talented concert pianist as follows: "She was asked the secret to her success. She replied, “Planned neglect.” Then she explained, “When I was in music school, there were many…

26/03/2013 No Comments

Learning from Mistakes

"There are two kinds of learning: experience, which is gained from your own mistakes, and wisdom, which is learned from the mistakes of others" John C. Maxwell When working on any OSS project, there are plenty of experiences to be gained. ;) But where does your wisdom come from? In what forums do you learn from others? Who do you learn from? I try to have…

25/03/2013 No Comments

National OctopOSS Association

"Professional sports is a business." Lynn Swann The above is true, but is there also a lot that business can learn from professional sports? With most professional sports, there is a clear goal for every team, the championship at the end of each season. This defines the vision that all players and coaches are working towards Coaches evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their playing squads…

24/03/2013 No Comments

Sticky stories

“The best ideas have most of these traits: They are simple, core messages; they are unexpected; they are concrete, credible, and emotional, and they are stories.” Chip and Dan Heath in Made to Stick It's no coincidence that in the millenia before writing was invented the most important parables were passed down through generations via stories because they, rather than facts or figures, are the mechanism…

23/03/2013 No Comments

Lose your fear in a sandpit

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt A high percentage of the population has a fear of change - made up of their constituent fears including fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of loss, fear of leaving a…

22/03/2013 No Comments

Beaten up

"You can cultivate optimism by.... Remaining up-beat even when you're beaten up" John C. Maxwell in Failing Forward. Any significant OctopOSS project will find a way of beating you up somewhere along the way. Working with small teams on international projects, away from the support network of home, it was obvious to me that the team members who were able to remain up-beat were of enormous…

21/03/2013 No Comments

Sharing the Load

"We need to invest in a way that makes sure we've got the workforce we need in the future." Jeanne Shaheen Workforce management is the tool/s by which discrete CSP tasks are tracked and managed. For example, when creating a new customer order, the following separate pieces of a sample end-to-end order process might all be handled by different staff: The Procurement Team need to order a…

20/03/2013 No Comments

What really matters?

"Eliminate the things that don't matter, that you're never going to get better at or that you're already good at. What's left are the places where you have the opportunity to change your position in the market." Seth Godin In many ways, the quote above holds true for whether you're a vendor, a CSP or an individual. As an individual or organisation alike if you narrow…

19/03/2013 No Comments

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