Late last week we published an article, "From Telco to HellCo: I’m the CEO of a large telco. I want to destroy it as fast as I can." Based on all the feedback, you could say that it seemed to resonate! Using Charlie Munger's Inversion Technique, we suggested 21 ways to kill off a large telco quick-smart! However, as I was writing the 21 kill-shots, I…
Read More »Many of the telco industry's fittest and finest have just returned from a week in Copenhagen at TM Forum's flagship event, DTW24. Iain Morris of Light Reading suggests in an article that Copenhagen is an apt location for the event because many industry representatives are "in little mermaid land." The tone of his article is urgent and critical, rightly highlighting the severe challenges faced by the…
Read More »OSS Transformation Resourcing Questions Have you ever had to wrestle with the conundrum of organisational change when embarking on a major OSS transformation? How many people will I need? What tasks will they do? What skills will they require? Who are the best people to get involved in the transformation? How much budget needs to be assigned? These are all questions I get asked on a…
Read More »Are you looking for a role in OSS? Or are you looking for someone with skills in OSS to help fill an OSS role or on an upcoming project? At Passionate About OSS, we get asked about both sides of this equation on a regular basis. We regularly find ourselves trying to help as match-makers, albeit on a best-effort and pro-bono basis. To help with this…
Read More »In the highly competitive domain of Operational Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS), standing out isn't just about offering a comprehensive set of features. It's about delivering an exceptional user interface (UI), user experience (UX), and customer experience (CX). Despite this, it seems that the prioritisation of UI / UX / CX is appreciably overlooked by the OSS/BSS industry. As a result, I'd like…
Read More »I love blogs. One of the amazing things about them is that it allows you to hear the wisdom of exceptional individuals who you'd otherwise never have access to or ever have the chance to meet. They're the best mentors you never had. One example of that was in last week's post from David Heinemeier Hansson about triggering people to run A/B tests in their own…
Read More »Passionate about OSS and Telco - Locals Lunch Held at Noon on the Second Friday of Each Month. Held at the Golden Hills Brewery - 25 Station St, Diamond Creek VIC (see map below) The doors open at noon. Join us for an informal meetup called "Passionate about OSS and Telco - Locals Lunch," held at noon on the second Friday of each month. This event brings…
Read More »Are you familiar with David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) and Jason Fried, the Co-Founders of 37signals (Makers of Basecamp and other software solutions)? As far as I know, they've never had anything to do with telco OSS tools, but I do love the clarity of a lot of the concepts they share on the 37signals blog and in their books like, "Rework" (which makes it into my…
Read More »This article by Jeff Haden in Inc Magazine, "30 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Said 1 Habit Separates the Doers From the Dreamers," has made me re-think the way I work, but also reconsider the way the OSS / telco industry works. "One of my least favorite things to do is ask for help. Not only do I not like to ask, but I take a somewhat…
Read More »I’d love to get your perspective on something. In recent times, quite a few people have reached out to suggest that PAOSS should create a comprehensive OSS/BSS training programme because there’s nothing really suited to their needs available on the market today. A couple of these people have suggested that the TM Forum courses are the best, but (rightly) focus on TM Forum assets like ODA,…
Read More »We've just started an exciting new project in the last couple of weeks and have had some great workshops with the client's exec & project teams. This client has an ambitious target of multiplying their revenues several-fold over the next few years. The systems transformation we're planning will be a fundamental building block to help with achieving those goals. So much so that it's probably impossible…
Read More »We were honoured to be guests on the Zero-Touch Telecom (ZTT) show last week. The discussion mainly revolved around a highly problematic skills gap that’s likely to widen between network masters and apprentices once we introduce significant automation via tools such as AIOps and the like. In response, Michael P. asked a great question, "With the shift towards automation, what are some innovative ways we can cultivate…
Read More »Are you as fascinated with automation, AIOps, zero-touch networking, autonomous networking and the like? If so, you might like to listen in on a chat I had with Geoff Hollingworth of Rakuten Symphony on the "Zero-Touch Telecom Show" In it, we talked about some of the concepts from recent content here on PAOSS including: The 12 dilemmas we face on the journey to zero-touch operations A…
Read More »There's a common misnomer that AIOps and Network Automation solutions are just stood up and a bunch of people are stood down. That is, as soon as the tools become operational, the network operator can start reducing head-count. Project sponsors pray for it (to justify their business cases), network operations staff fear it (for the impact it could have on their careers). However, the reality is…
Read More »If you're a technologist (eg enterprise architect, developer, BA, tech PM, CTO, etc) who has been tasked with implementing significant technological and business transformation in a company accustomed to stasis or incremental changes, effective persuasion is crucial. We've spoken previously about the importance of rainmakers, how they're the real heroes behind OSS-led transformations. As described in the article link above, my perspective on rainmakers has drastically…
Read More »We've embarked on a journey of trying to plan for the future of OSS/BSS, not by predicting the future, but by seeking ways to be ready for possible future situations by using Peter Schwartz's scenario planning technique. Using this technique, we've identified four possible future scenarios for telco based on two high-impact variables (tech growth and regulatory control) as well as high-impact certainties (geopolitical influence and…
Read More »Over the years, I've often referred to The Corkscrew Analogy or Momentum Spiral to describe a mindset of incremental improvement that's needed to keep an OSS project moving forward. Rather than trying to jump straight from scratch (blue dot) to perfection / completion (yellow dot), it's far more helpful to make many smaller steps and iterate. For example, rather than trying to write the perfect system…
Read More »We've embarked on a journey of trying to plan for the future of OSS/BSS, not by predicting the future, but by seeking ways to be ready for possible future situations by using Peter Schwartz's scenario planning technique. Using this technique, we've identified four possible future scenarios for telco based on two high-impact variables (tech growth and regulatory control) as well as high-impact certainties (geopolitical influence and…
Read More »As discussed in the previous article, "Future Scenario Planning: Have you given up on doing an OSS transformation? (part 1)" part of the fun of OSS/BSS transformation is trying to imagine the future environment, 5-10 years from now, when your transformed OSS/BSS is still servicing the needs of your future stakeholders. But what does that future look like? Nobody can truly predict the future. "No matter…
Read More »Earlier in the week, a friend mentioned he was reading "Alchemy" by Rory Sutherland. It's not an OSS book per se, but does provide some great examples for helping us think in original ways - a must-have skill for any OSS practitioner! "Alchemy" helps with some really lateral ways for re-framing problems. In one example, Sutherland points out that when considering improvements to the Channel Tunnel…
Read More »In recent articles, we've discussed how Private Equity (PE) could help to reshape the struggling telecommunications business models and how OSS/BSS stacks touch almost every part of a telco business model without most people even realising it (as per the diagram below). We've also discussed how the pragmatism of Tier-2 telco thinking could be a great starting point for designing the next-generation telco business model. Part…
Read More »