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 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 […]
“Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different… to think out of the box.” Walter Isaacson. I love the “out of the box” terminology that some OSS sales people use, implying that their toolsets are fully functional straight after installation, analogous to a spreadsheet or word processing application. […]
“OpenFlow facilitates the use of “bare metal switches” and eliminates traditional vendor lock-in, giving you freedom of choice in networking like you have on other areas of your IT infrastructure such as compute and storage. SDN controllers also expose APIs northbound, which allow you to deploy a wide range of off-the-shelf and custom-built network applications […]
“With the multivendor CSP environment of today, it’s a blame game if there is something going on with the network. Just imagine throwing a lot more vendors and solutions into the mix. Unlike what we have today, an NFV proposed solution can have the VNF from one vendor and hardware from another. On top of […]
“Conflation occurs when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, seem to be a single identity — the differences appear to become lost. In logic, it is the practice of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one, which produces errors or misunderstandings as a […]
“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Laurence J. Peter. In yesterday’s blog, we discussed the hierarchy of communication by management systems. It reminded me of a story from a project I worked on many years ago in a developing country. Communication at this organisation was firmly rooted in […]
“….I thought about the problem of communication of vision and strategy a lot, but I didn’t realise how the functional, hierarchical structure we’d borrowed from the military made communication in large organisations possible. Thinking a lot more about it since, I think the military model – the foundation of the industrial, functional, hierarchical organisation structure […]
“….once you start a company transformation, it’s like a stampede. If you try to lead from the front, you get trampled; if you try to lead from the back, you have no impact. Best to lead from the side by carefully nudging and turning the stampede to avoid everyone going over the cliff.” Robert D. […]
“You and I are streaming data engines.” Jeff Hawkins. You’ll have noticed that I often write about using sandpit environments to trial and refine different OSS configurations. They tend to be really helpful as a change management facilitation mechanism. One of the things you might be wondering is exactly what can you do in a […]
“It is bad enough for a Project Manager when a project encounters a problem – but often that is just the start of distressing conversations with project stakeholders. The key to surviving this mess is recognizing the types of conversations that loom ahead and then avoiding the destructive deliberations while consciously giving preference to worthwhile […]
“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day […]
“[AIG’s] Science Team intentionally refrains from using the words “data” or “analytics,” as the team’s capabilities stretch far beyond these two disciplines: behavioral economists, psychologists, engineers, and change management experts work hand-in-hand with data scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians. And for good reason: this multidisciplinary approach is essential to go beyond merely generating new insights from […]
“Central to the work of a project manager is balancing competing demands. The term “triple constraint” is a well-known phrase in project management that refers to the competing demands of scope, time, and cost. The manner in which these three demands are balanced affects quality. If one of these factors is affected, at least one […]
