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
“Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don’t let them take you ALIVE.” Sid Vicious. In many previous posts (including “A new category of OSS“), I’ve pondered how network virtualisation will disrupt the status-quo within OSS. If, in the […]
“Many believe effective networking is done face-to-face, building a rapport with someone by looking at them in the eye, leading to a solid connection and foundational trust.” Raymond Arroyo. As a typical engineer, when I first entered OSS projects my initial focus was on understanding the technologies and delivering the best technical solution that I […]
“Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” M. Scott Peck. I was recently discussing the […]
“Creativity’s about ownership.” John Maeda. The biggest profit you can make is from repeatedly selling something that you don’t own. Some versions of this model will send you to jail. Other versions can make you rich. John Reilly has proposed the value fabric concept, where third-party organisations become interwoven into the supply chain. In the […]
“When you hire somebody to cut your lawn, you don’t give them a list of all the blades of grass in your yard and the length to cut each one to (prescription), you tell them to make it look nice (intent) and they figure out the rest. Intent-based networking emphasizes the “cut my lawn” interface […]
“Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.” Paul Theroux. As the domain name says, I’m passionate about OSS. However, I’m starting to wonder whether its reputation outside of OSS fanatics (and there are many!) is on the nose to such an extent that the term […]
“My Ph.D. was based on research and development of new breakthrough technologies. As a scientist, Dr. Andersen instructed us to use our minds, training and skills to solve complex and hard scientific problems. If one solves easy problems, then hundreds of people can do the same. You will differentiate yourself by solving complex, yet big, […]
“You are in the business of testing your guesses, not convincing yourself that you are right.” Nathan Furr, in his book, “Nail It then Scale It” The speed of implementation of OSS projects tends to be quite lengthy (months/years on tier-one CSPs), so we’re not exactly as responsive as some other industries by example. However, […]
“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass […]
“Nobody will ever pay you to solve your problems… but they’ll line up if you can solve theirs.” Ramit Sethi. OSS were originally designed to coordinate and streamline network management processes for CSPs. OSS helped CSPs solve operational problems. They still do. Keeping Ramit Sethi’s quote in mind, if we have a customer that needs […]
“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” John Russell. You must be wondering whether the heading above is a typo? It’s not. Let me explain. This is the fifth post in my Customer Experience series. The previous four have been […]
“I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.” Larry Bossidy. In a recent post, I spoke of the challenge in getting the right balance between two scarce assets, customers and human resources. This got me […]
“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest […]
“When you translate a dream into reality, it’s never a full implementation. It is easier to dream than to do.” Shai Agassi. After Contract Negotiations, the second post in this Customer Experience series, today’s post discusses the next step, when the project moves into the implementation phase. The customer experience during the implementation stage basically […]
“The most common thing that pegs an entrepreneur as an amateur is when they come in and immediately start talking about their amazing new technology, and forget to start the discussion with, “What big problem in the market am I trying to solve?” If they don’t start with the problem, then I know they are […]
“Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and stressing the true values.” Thomas S. Monson. Don’t worry, I’m not actually writing about OSS on our Christmas Day holiday […]
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Friedrich Nietzsche. A recent post posed the question, “have you noticed that the more technically proficient your customer is, the more likely you are to receive their specifications as “required solutions” rather than requirements?” To put this another way, the customer is […]
“The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.” Albert Einstein. If you’ve ever been a solutions integrator or an implementing vendor, have you ever noticed that the more technically proficient your customer is, the more likely you are to receive […]
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” Bill Gates. I was having an interesting chat about ivory towers in OSS development with a learned colleague named Steve recently and had a lightbulb moment. Whilst we have a feedback form on every single page of a SaaS product my company […]
“It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.” Confucius. Further to yesterday’s blog about OSS Consulting by Walking Around (CBWA), consultants and vendors should be continually striving to understand their client’s businesses better. That’s a given of course. It’s not the duration of the placement (of product in the […]
