But do you want to get better?
“But do you want to get better? It seems like a stupid question. Of course we want our organization, our work and our health to improve. But often, we don’t. Better means change and change means risk and risk means fear… There are countless ways to listen, to engage with users, to learn and to […]
Automating the Work of Hundreds
“Today, the FBAR service [Facebook Auto-Remediation] is developed and maintained by two full time engineers, but according to the most recent metrics, it’s doing the work of approximately 200 full time system administrators. FBAR now manages more than 50% of the Facebook infrastructure and we’ve found that services have dramatic increases in reliability when they […]
Technology provides no benefits of its own
“Technology provides no benefits of its own; it is the application of technology to business opportunities that produces ROI.” Robert McDowell. Let’s have a look at the quote above in the context of CSP service offerings, technology delivery methods and customer experiences. Let’s start with POTS – Plain Old Telephony Service. The customer experience (ie […]
Divide and conquer or transparency?
“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” Henry Ford. I have an interesting question to pose to you today dear readers, one that I don’t think has a perfectly right or wrong answer, but one you’re bound to have an opinion on. Let me put the contrasting views to you. Let’s […]
The death of fibre
“It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.” Reed Hastings. Whilst futurists talk about advances in wireless technology being the death of fibre, higher volumes of wireless traffic equals a larger number of fibre backhaul points… for […]
The evolution of OSS
“For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.” Leonardo da Vinci. Readers of this blog will notice how often I’m looking into the future of what OSS might look like into the future. Today I […]
Forward scout
“So I’m going to tell you, it’s going to be a good year. There are good players all over this country, and it is our job as a scouting department to find them, draft them, sign them, develop them, and help us to continue to win championships. So it’s going to be a good year.” […]
Fear of the ripples
“As long as you don’t make waves, ripples, life seems easy. But that’s condemning yourself to impotence and death before you are dead.” Jeanne Moreau. Have you ever noticed how the applications within some large OSS suites are so tightly bound that their operators are petrified of the ripple effect – where they’re not so […]
Network and OSS policies
“Intent doesn’t change as a result of a link going down, a server crashing, changing cloud providers, changing switch vendors, upgrading firmware or any other change to the infrastructure.” David Lenrow, chair of the ONF Northbound Working Group, who recently hosted the Intent-based Summit, which has passed a proposal to commence work on the Network […]
Network virtualisation, security and OSS
“Security experts are such a cheery lot. They’ll usually tell you you’re doing everything wrong and that we’re all doomed.” Craig Matsumoto in an article here. I don’t profess to be a network security expert, but I can’t help but thinking that network virtualisation will bring security and OSS experts far closer together than ever […]
Extend and expand
“What the early adopter is buying, is some kind of change agent. By being the first to implement this change in their industry, the early adopters expect to get a jump on the competition, whether from lower product costs, faster time to market, more complete customer service, or some other comparable business advantage. They expect […]
Chief Simplification Officer attributes
“Do you think that such a role (a Chief Simplification Officer or Project Simplification Officer) is justified? If so, what do you think are the essential traits that this person would need?” I posed these questions in a recent article entitled, “Chief Simplification Officer,” so rather than just leave you with an open question, today […]
Chief Simplification Officer
“What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?” Tony Robbins. Complexity is the single biggest challenge that stands in the way of us delivering OSS masterpieces. As described in, “The triple constraint of complexity,” the reduction of any complexity should have a multiplier effect towards the […]
Coping with fluid scoping
“You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.” George S. Patton. Long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with the use of Seth Godin’s thrashing principle in OSS to attempt to get a scope locked in and developed against. The reality is that despite all the […]
Where OSS meets Smart Grids
“It’s less about boxes and bases stations; it’s now a lot about software analytics, capability of reconfiguration and all that. It’s a very big shift from what we have seen in the last years.” Professor Mischa Dohler here. In the video in the link above, Prof Dohler suggests there are two major disruptions happening in […]
Overcoming restistance to change
“Inspiration is much more likely to develop from the habit of consistently paying attention to life’s small moments.” Robert Maurer, from his book, “The Spirit of Kaizen: Creating Lasting Excellence One Small Step at a Time.” As we all know, OSS projects are a combination of people, process and technology. However, since most of us […]
Cisco invests $21m in STEM
“Cisco Systems Australia has announced a five-year investment program expanding to train over 100,000 Australian tertiary and school students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills. AUSTEM 2020 is a new program, which builds on Cisco Australia’s long-term commitment to tackle the STEM skills shortage and help create an innovation economy, boost productivity and […]
16 root causes of OSS problems
“The Toyota production system has been built on the practice and evolution of this scientific approach. By asking and answering ‘why’ five times, we can get to the real cause of the problem, which is often hidden behind more obvious symptoms.” Eric Ries, in his book, “The Lean Startup.” Some time ago, I prepared a […]
Jumping into the explosion
“A while ago our world exploded. The environment and the world of towns and cities and families and communities blew apart, along with the world of ideas and information, of entertainment and communication, of politics and diplomacy, and of course the world of businesses and organisations. It’s hard to date when the explosion started, but […]
Batched or chained?
“A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong.” Tecumseh. I have an interesting dilemma to pose for you today. Let’s say you have a migration to undertake that involves your field work-force. The migration requires the re-direction of customer services from one destination to a new destination via re-patching at various points […]