"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"I can cite numerous sponsors at different places in my career that made a huge difference for me just in terms of pulling me aside and giving me a tip or some coaching." Denise Morrison. In many organisations, a project sponsor is simply the person who has the budget to approve a new project. When working on a sizeable OSS project, they need to be so…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »“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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"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…
Read More »"Most consultants tend to read voraciously, seeking new ideas and insights as they emerge around the world. Because of the many dimensions of the problems we address, it is important to read both broadly and deeply." Pamela McNamara OSS technologies and techniques are constantly evolving so OSS consultants and integrators have to allocate time towards learning just to remain current. Renewal of databases, programming languages, interface…
Read More »In the State of the Asian CXO Survey 2012 by T.C Seow, there has been a clearly identified increase in corporate culture being an inhibitor of innovation. Seow speculates "that there is now conflict between senior management and the younger, so-called Generation Y executives or millennials who do not see eye-to-eye with their bosses. Perhaps there is work to be done to bridge the widening gap between…
Read More »“Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.” Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration There is an interesting trend that often occurs when a vendor implementation team begins a new OSS project. There is a tendency to start with "You NEED to...." and that's where the customer often tunes out…
Read More »The following is a true story about an art teacher who decided to experiment with his grading system. It had an interesting side-effect relating to the dilemma of quality versus quantity. David Bayles and Ted Orland document the story in their book, "Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (And Rewards) of Art making " "The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing…
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