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 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 […]
“The term management by wandering around (MBWA), also management by walking around, refers to a style of business management which involves managers wandering around, in an unstructured manner, through the workplace(s), at random, to check with employees, or equipment, about the status of ongoing work. The emphasis is on the word wandering as an impromptu […]
“(start-ups) have to think about making money. From day one they have to figure out the best working business model for their social business. Fortunately there are a quite a few business models out there to evaluate: subscription, affiliate & referrals, lead generation, selling virtual goods or content, discounts & deals, freemium and … advertising.” […]
“The specific goals of a DevOps approach include improved deployment frequency, which can lead to faster time to market, lower failure rate of new releases, shortened lead time between fixes, and faster mean time to recovery in the event of a new release crashing or otherwise disabling the current system. Simple processes become increasingly programmable […]
“The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.” Frances E. Willard. As you all know already, OSS projects can be large, complex and cumbersome. Over the years, I’ve found so many different styles of inertia at play, some conspiratorial, but mostly related to […]
“…most of today’s open source companies license under an Apache software license (ASL), which lets the vendor decide whether to share code changes with the community or keep them as proprietary. Under this hybrid or dual-license, open source companies can charge for proprietary product extensions, and not just for services and support, accelerating revenue growth […]
“My current project is on data integrity where telco has number of bespoke inventory systems, systems acquired as part of M&As and COTS product. I am trying to put end to end story line in terms of process for data extraction, data investigation and analysis, data correction, impact on upstream and downstream systems. There can […]
“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” Thomas Berger. Source data is often the bane of the data migrator. We go to all lengths to manipulate, cleanse, create and otherwise fix errors in the data. But sometimes it’s simpler than that. Sometimes we have the opportunity of going to […]
“Life for an actual canary in a coal mine could be described in three words: “short but meaningful.” Early coal mines did not feature ventilation systems, so legend has it that miners would bring a caged canary into new coal seams. Canaries are especially sensitive to methane and carbon monoxide, which made them ideal for […]
“The quickest way to enter the fourth dimension is through an operation called Fork. A fork copies a three-dimensional repository, creating two equal but distinct repositories. A commit performed against one repository has no impact on the other, which means the codebases contained within will become more and more different, and eventually evolve into different […]
“Windstream, a leading provider of advanced network communications, announced plans to spin off certain telecommunications network assets into an independent, publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT). The transaction will enable Windstream to accelerate network investments, provide enhanced services to customers and maximize shareholder value. The transaction will allow the REIT, which will own Windstream’s […]
“[Guy]Kawasaki told the audience that this was one of the most important learnings from Jobs: “Price is something you pay on the first day, but value is the sum total of the experience.”.” Max Nyman on the Comptel blog. I recently assisted a customer through a vendor selection process as they migrated away from their […]
“[Guy] Kawasaki concluded by saying that skeptics aren’t the best innovators. Optimists are. In order ignite a paradigm change, you have to be able to see something valuable, unique and something that doesn’t yet exist and make it happen. Comptel believes Kawaski’s innovative mindset is also important in the context of the telecommunications industry. Now, […]
“You’re going to screw up. Accept it.” Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, from their book, “Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change.” Production databases can be a scary environment for operators who are taking over the reins of a new OSS that has been implemented by others (eg vendors, integrators, […]
“people who climb to the top of just about any field eclipse their peers through something as basic as deliberate practice.” Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, from their book, “Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change.” Patterson et al also make an interesting point in the above-mentioned book that Olympic […]
