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
“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 […]
“I’ve been involved in telecom operations for decades, and I’ve learned that there is nothing in networking as inertial as OSS/BSS. A large minority of my experts (but still a minority) think that we should scrap the whole OSS/BSS model and simply integrate operations tasks with the service models of SDN and NFV orchestration. That’s […]
The world of OSS, no matter where you are placed within its orbit, seems to be chaotic. There are always so many things to get done – updates, fixes, incidents, planning, designs, meetings, emails, etc, etc. I’d love to hear what you would do if the following situation presented itself: Every week, you get a […]
CSPs globally are trying to be innovative, and being heavily involved in tech since their earliest days, always perceive themselves to be innovative to their core (yes, bad pun). There’s no doubt that there is a lot of innovation happening in large CSPs, but I wonder how much of it is really attributable to the […]
Voice and data are no longer the services that organisations, large and small, see as making a difference. The services that do make a difference are more dynamic and diverse – digital distribution, promotion and marketing, payments and billing, business intelligence, business continuity (including security) and more – the factors that make their organisations thrive. […]
I’ve noticed the term “tech debt” entering the OSS vernacular to represent stuff that is built now as a short-term workaround before the long-term solution comes online. But what if it’s ALL tech-debt? Everything we build needs to be supported for its natural life. The more we accumulate, the more that needs supporting. Support represents […]
