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
“Uncontrolled access to data, with no audit trail of activity and no oversight would be going too far. This applies to both commercial and government use of data about people.” John Poindexter. Audit trails are a way of tracing back through the logs of historical activities undertaken through your OSS tools. The easy approach for […]
“Every single time you make a merger, somebody is losing his identity. And saying something different is just rubbish.” Carlos Ghosn. Today’s blog is derived from a wonderful question from a subscriber to the PAOSS blog. She asked: I would be interested to know more about Data integrity/Synchronization approach and challenges, especially when various mergers/acquisitions involved. Due to […]
“You can motivate by fear. And you can motivate by reward. But both of these methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self-motivation.” Homer Rice. When it comes to OSS operators, I’m not a particularly strong believer in the carrot or stick approach to motivation to gain outstanding results using the tools they’re […]
“Strategy making needs to function beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that produces new perspectives and new combinations… Once managers understand this, they can avoid other costly misadventures caused by applying formal techniques, without judgement and intuition, to problem solving.” Henry Mintzberg. Henry Mintzberg described the following strategic approaches / perspectives: Strategy as […]
“In vain have you acquired knowledge if you have not imparted it to others.” Deuteronomy Rabbah. When implementing an OSS for a customer, I love getting hold of their real data because then their environment seems to become clearer. The more aspects of the data you investigate, the more the flower unfurls. The more their […]
“I don’t like to be out of my comfort zone, which is about a half an inch wide.” Larry David. There are still many organisations, even CSPs, that manage their customers and networks from their network equipment vendors. Blend in some spreadsheets and cross-domain tools like SolarWinds in combination with CRM, financial planning, etc and […]
“In a typical telecom environment, data to support systematic decision making can feel like “feast or famine”. On the one hand, the amount of information available, when combined with the expertise of strategic planners with different backgrounds and experience, can be overwhelming. On the other hand, when launching new products into new markets, where the past […]
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” Henry David Thoreau. Stranded assets were mentioned in an earlier post, but one asset class that was overlooked in that post was services leased from other communications providers. It’s […]
“Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” Vera Nazarian. After lots of writing and refining, my book, which is dedicated to OSS implementations, is almost finished. It’s based around 22 commonly asked questions, particularly by readers who are relatively new to OSS. It also allows readers […]
“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” Steve Jobs. I love this concept – […]
“ONF is excited about this collaboration with ETSI as we believe this relationship can significantly contribute to the goals of the NFV ISG, which we have pledged to support since it was formed, as well as become a relevant source of requirements and use cases for the SDN community.” Dan Pitt. As described in an […]
“Change is usually accompanied by a heap of uncertainty. We don’t like uncertainty and in the absence of any good structure we will cling to what we know. This, in most cases, happens to be the status quo.” Dr Jason Fox. in his book, “The Game Changer.” As OSS implementers, we are the change agents […]
“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” Steve Jobs. I’m currently reading a book by Peter Sander entitled, “What would Steve Jobs Do?” Peter describes the following key take-aways for establishing a vision from his analysis of Steve’s actions: What would I want from a product / experience? What would surprise […]
“When you think of any aspect of life or work, augmented reality is completely going to change how we do it.” Ori Inbar. Here in Australia, we have a program called Dial Before You Dig, which provides information, usually in the form of plans, about underground assets for a given address. It is used by […]
“If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.” Charles Kettering. If you have a goal of creating the world’s best OSS tool, where do you start? Do you try to understand the competition and do it better than they do? How would you prove that it’s better than them in a […]
“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.” Brian Tracy. A Data Control Network (DCN) is the network that carries management traffic between components of your network, OSS, BSS and […]
“Decisions are temporary – Companies are often paralyzed by big decisions that they believe are permanent. They think that what they decide today has to be that way forever.” Jason Fried on here. This statement can be very true for OSS projects. They are so big and so intimidating for customers at times that they […]
“All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.” Earl Nightingale. After much delay, the OSS Roadmap page has finally been updated to include reference to TOGAF, eTOM and Zachman’s Framework, providing a slightly more comprehensive view of how to conduct a roadmap analysis on your OSS. […]
“Planning is Vastly Overrated – 37signals doesn’t do road maps, specs, projections. They have rough ideas internally but these aren’t shared externally. Even internally they’re not set in stone or written down. Think about what’s being done now and maybe what’s next. You set expectations too soon and things changed.” Jason Fried on here. Them […]
“The trouble with the future is that it usually arrives before we’re ready for it.” Anonymous. It strikes me that there are a lot of network experts in the world but there aren’t very many OSS experts, relatively. As such, OSS is a relatively more immature market in terms of the brainpower that has been […]
