OSS Transformation is all about managing change – organisationally, functionally and operationally during in-flight projects. This is the most commonly overlooked factor when planning OSS projects
Many years ago I worked on a three-way project with 1) a customer, 2) a well-known equipment vendor and 3) a service provider (my client). Time-frames were particularly tight, not so much because of the technical challenge, but because of the bureaucratic processes of the customer and the service provider. The project was worth well […]
“You have to love being incompetent in order to be competent.” James Altucher. Not sure that anyone loves feeling incompetent, but James’ quote is particularly relevant in the world of OSS. There are always so many changes underway that you’re constantly taken out of your comfort zone. But the question becomes how do you overcome […]
The following extract from Ken Segall’s book, “Insanely Simple,” provides a great story on persuasion: “At one agency meeting with Steve Jobs, we were reviewing the content of a proposed iMac commercial when a debate arose about how much we should say in the commercial. The creative team was arguing that it would work best […]
As recently discussed with two friends and colleagues, Raman and Darko, Proofs of Concept (PoC) or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) implementations can be a double-edged sword. By building something without fully knowing the end-game, you are potentially building tech-debt that may be very difficult to work around without massive (or complete) overhaul of what you’ve […]
OSS business case evaluators routinely ask many questions that relate to key metrics like return on investment, capital to be outlaid, expected returns, return on investment, and more of the same circular financial questions. 🙂 They do also ask a few technical questions to decide risk – of doing the project or not doing the […]
“The cloud model (ie hosted by a trusted partner) becomes attractive from the perspective of repeatability, from the efficiency of doing the same thing repeatedly at scale.” From, “I want a business outcome, not a deployment challenge.” OSS struggles when it comes to repeatability. Often within an organisation, but almost always when comparing between organisations. […]
As OSS exponents, I’m sure you’ll agree that there are many OSS tools / skills that we use and develop (to differing degrees) over the years. In fact, there are so many to choose from that we often have to make a conscious decision which ones to master and which ones to leave for others […]
Omnichannel is intended to be a strategy that provides customers with a seamless, consistent experience across all of their contact channels – channels that include online/digital, IVR, contact centre, mobile app, retail store, B2B portal, etc. The challenge of delivering consistency across these platforms is that there is little cross-over between the organisations that deliver […]
“I often leverage use-case design and touch-point mapping through the stack to ensure that all of the use-cases can be turned into user-journeys, process journeys and data journeys. This process can pick up the high-level flows, but more importantly, the high-level gaps in your theoretical stack.” Yesterday’s blog discussed the use of use cases to […]
When it comes to designing a multi-vendor (sometimes also referred to as best-of-breed) OSS architecture stack, there is never a truer saying than, “the devil is in the detail.” Oftentimes, it’s just not feasible to design every interface / integration / data-flow traversing a theoretical OSS stack (eg pre-contract award, whilst building a business case, […]
Back in early 2014, PAOSS posted an article about the importance of closed loop designs in OSS, which included the picture below: It generated quite a bit of discussion at the time and led me to being introduced to two companies that were separately doing some interesting aspects of this theoretical closed loop system. [Interestingly, […]
“We can look and take lessons on how services evolved in the cloud space. Our customers have expressed how they want to take these services and want a business outcome, not a deployment challenge.” Shawn Hakl. Make no mistake, cloud OSS is still a deployment challenge (at this nascent stage at least), but in the […]
“Just because you’re afraid of doing something doesn’t give you a permission slip to not do it.” Debbie Millman. There’s a lot of fear in OSS. So many things can go wrong (the OctopOSS theory), so much incompetence is created, so many nearly insurmountable integration challenges await and their complexity means that there is no […]
“Here are a few questions I reflect on: – Am I excited to be doing what I’m doing or am I in aimless motion? – Are the trade-offs between work and my relationships well-balanced? – How can I speed up the process from where I am to where I want to go? – What big […]
OSS are often delivered into large organisational structures, structures that are functionally siloed. For large OSS, even the OSS team can have multiple functional silos. Where there are functional silos, there are activities within OSS that need to be delivered across silos. That’s where things can get a bit dysfunctional. Jurisdictions, ownership of responsibilities, agreements […]
“When in doubt, connect. That’s what fast-growing, important organizations do. Making stuff is great. Making connections is even better.” Seth Godin in his post here. Simple words. Simple concept. Interesting message…. with a traffic-light of OSS layers. Layer 1 – A connection red light The more connections an OSS has, the more enriched the data […]
OSS can be complicated beasts with many tentacles. It can make starting a new project daunting. When I start, I like to use a WBS to show all the tentacles (people, processes, technology, contracts) on a single page, then look for the lead domino (or dominoes). A lead domino is the first piece, the one […]
In 1998 Berkshire Hathaway acquired a reinsurance company called General Re. “The only significant staff change that followed the merger was the elimination of General Re’s investment unit. Some 150 people had been in charge of deciding where to invest the company’s funds; they were replaced with just one individual – Warren Buffett.” Robert G. […]
During the last week, this blog-roll has talked about the benefits, but also the challenges facing implementation techniques like Agile in the world of OSS. There’s no doubt that they’re good at breaking down challenges into smaller pieces for implementation. Unfortunately there’s also the risk of doing for the sake of doing – stuffing more […]
“While we were talking about this permanent shop, which he still hadn’t opened, his attention would often drift to his next shop. And the one after that. And after that. And then building an app to make online ordering easy. And then, becoming the next Starbucks. Whoa. Hold on, man, I told him. I get […]
