“The gameplan tells what you want to happen, but the scoreboard tells what is happening.”
John C Maxwell
Over the years, I’ve found it interesting that most of the organisations I’ve consulted to have significant hurdles for a new OSS to jump through to get funded (the gameplan), but rarely spend much time on the results (the scoreboard)… apart from the burndown of capital during the implementation project.
From one perspective, that’s great for OSS implementers. With less accountability, we can move straight on to the next implementation and not have to justify whether our projects are worth the investment. It allows us to focus on justifying whether we’ve done a technically brilliant implementation instead.
However, from the other perspective, we’re short-changing ourselves if we’re not proving the value of our projects. We’re not building up the credits in the sponsor bank ahead of the inevitable withdrawals (ie when one of our OSS projects goes over time, budget or functionality is reduced to bring in time/budget). It’s the lack of credits that make sponsors skeptical of any OSS investment value and force the aforementioned jumping through hoops.
One of our OSS’s primary functions is to collect and process data – to be the central nervous system for our organisations. We have the data to build the scoreboards. Perhaps we just don’t apply enough creativity to proving the enormous value of what our OSS are facilitating.
Do you ever consider whether you’re on the left or right side of this ledger / scoreboard?
Standing out in a highly saturated and fragmented OSS market can be really difficult. We’re regularly involved in bake-offs where we see dozens of OSS
One of the things I love about my job is all the vendor demos I get to see. Product demos are one of the four
Have you read the book, “The 4-hour work week” by Tim Ferris? It was one of those relatively rare books that inspired a complete mindset
Over the years, we’ve been involved in many OSS procurement events and have seen a variety of different pricing models proposed by vendors. Being software,
Here at Passionate About OSS, we are exactly that – Passionate About OSS (Operational Support Systems). We’re also passionate about BSS, NMS, or any other names you call the tools that help to operationalise your network.
