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
“In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record – it’s easy to discover who’s in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don’t appear on any organization chart.” Gary Hamel. In making the decision to take on a major new OSS project there is normally a significant hierarchy of individuals involved. […]
“I don’t look at myself as a commodity, but I’m sure a lot of people have.” Marilyn Monroe Will there be a time in the not too distant future where traditional telco services become a pure commodity? For example, will users simply plug into socket in their wall and get ubiquitous bandwidth / cloud services […]
“People usually act for their own reasons, not someone else’s reasons. If they do change a behavior because of something someone else has said, most of the time that change won’t stick. The secret of Instant Influence is that it helps people discover their own reasons for doing something, even something they thought they didn’t […]
“A long apprenticeship is the most logical way to success. The only alternative is overnight stardom, but I can’t give you a formula for that.” Chet Atkins. In an earlier post entitled “serving an apprenticeship,” I spoke about the length of time it takes for each OSS newbie to reach a state of being productive. […]
“You can’t plan a script. The beauty of improvisation is you are experiencing it in the moment. If you try to plan what the next line is supposed to be, you’re just going to be disappointed when the other people on stage with you don’t do or say what you want them to do and […]
“Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of course mergers and acquisitions are generally accompanied by downsizing.” Susan George Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are challenging for their OSS teams on a number of different levels – across technology and personnel. Maintaining business as usual means that all […]
“Cycle time reduction in marketing and sales deals with speeding the time-to-market cycle for new products and services and reducing the order-to-cash cycle time, which produces benefits such as increased cash flows and profits, improved utilisation of human and machine resources, decreased costs and improved customer service” S. Rao Vallabhaneni. OSS can have a big […]
“It is common for us to receive an e-mail from a customer apologizing for not responding sooner because they thought our automated follow-up was being done manually. The key to a successful follow-up program is personalization and making it relevant for the customer.” John Hopkins. Why did Apple’s iPod revolutionise the music industry? Was it […]
“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” Rabindranath Tagore. In yesterday’s blog I discussed the aircraft carrier analogy when bringing rapid change into a legacy OSS. The CSPs of the future will need to be based around partnerships. Not just […]
“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” Anatole France. In the past, CSPs had such significant barriers to entry and economic clout that they could price almost any smaller player […]
“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” Elizabeth Edwards. Many leading OSS products have been built around concepts […]
“The plan isn’t nearly as important as the planning” Keith Rattie in Hit the Ground Running OSS evolve too quickly to have a single authoritative plan. Planning and re-planning are the key, with the resultant plans just way-points along the journey.
“Everything feels like its on the precipice of some major transformation, whether we like it or not.” Sean Lennon. OSS transformation tends to focus on the activities required to take the OSS from current state to a desired future state (naturally). An OSS Transformation is generally planned around the introduction of new tools, processes and/or […]
“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” Napoleon Hill No matter what OSS project, or any project you start, capturing the requirements is the first place to start. The requirements help to identify the guiding vision for what you need […]
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt A high percentage of the population has a fear of change – made up of their constituent fears including fear of the […]
“Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone’s hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.” Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration There is an interesting trend that often occurs when a vendor implementation team begins a new OSS project. There is a tendency to start with […]
“When you hear buzz around the beehive, you know they’re making honey in there.” Terrence Howard In an earlier post we talked about gesture computing and how it might be used to manage the networks and control the OSS of the future, so the possibilities presented by the MYO from Thalmic Labs, seen here, appears to be […]
“I love inventing worlds and characters and settings and scenarios.” Jerry B. Jenkins Have you played the “What if?” game with your OSS lately? Following on from yesterday’s post about moonshots, have you done any “what if?” analysis on how various possible moonshots might effect your OSS? What if the current network technologies were superseded […]
“You need to feel frustration and discomfort before you can really learn.” Jamie on 37signals.com blog How did you feel when starting out on your first OSS project? Frustration and discomfort were definitely two of the many feelings that I felt. The learning curve was definitely steep. And the more I learnt, the more obvious […]
“When you’re building a new product, you’re often thinking about all the new things people are going to be able to do with it. Now they can do this, now they can do that. Exciting! But there’s a better question to ask: What are people going to stop doing once they start using your product?” […]
