OSS are all about helping the customer in some way
“It’s not unusual for something to be positioned as the high performance alternative. The car that can go 0 to 60 in three seconds, the corkscrew that’s five times faster, the punch press that’s incredibly efficient… The thing is, though, that the high performance vs. low performance debate misses something. High at what? That corkscrew […]
“Change happens when YOU and I DO things. Not when we argue.” James Altucher. We recently discussed how ego can cause stagnation in OSS delivery. The same post also indicated how smart contracts potentially streamline OSS delivery and change management. Along similar analytical lines, there’s a structural shift underway in traditional business consulting, as described […]
Yesterday we talked about the cuckoo-bird analogy and how it was preventing telcos from building more valuable platforms on top of their capital-intensive network platforms. Thanks to Dean Bubley, it gave examples of how the most successful platform plays were platforms on platforms (eg Microsoft Office on Windows, iTunes on iOS, phones on physical networks, […]
“The cuckoo bird is infamous for laying its eggs in other birds’ nests. The young cuckoos grow much faster than the rightful occupants, forcing the other chicks out – if they haven’t already physically knocked the other eggs overboard. (See “brood parasitism”, here). Analogies exist quite widely in technology – a faster-growing “tenant” sometimes pushes […]
Over the last couple of posts, we’ve referred to the following diagram and its ability to create a glass ceiling on OSS feature releases: Yesterday’s post indicated that the current proliferation of microservices has the potential to amplify the strangulation. So how does that compare with the previous approach that was built around COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) […]
Eric Ries’ “The Lean Startup,” has a short chapter entitled, “Get out of the Building.” It basically describes getting away from your screen – away from reading market research, white papers, your business plan, your code, etc – and out into customer-land. Out of your comfort zone and into a world of primary research that extends beyond […]
Omnichannel will remain full of holes until we figure out a way of tracking user journeys rather than trying to prescribe (design, document, maintain) process flows. As a customer jumps between the various channels, they move between systems. In doing so, we tend to lose the ability to watch customer’s journey as a single continuous […]
My wife and I attended a Christmas party over the weekend and on the trip home we discussed customer service. In particular we were discussing the customer service training she’d had, as well as the culture of customer service reinforcement she’d experienced via leaders and peers in her industry. She doesn’t work in ICT or […]
“Corporate innovation is far more dependent on external collaboration and customer insight than having a ‘lab’.” Andy Howard in a fabulous LinkedIn post. Like so many other industries, OSS is ripe for disruption through innovation. Andy Howard’s post provides a number of sobering statistics for any large OSS vendors thinking of embarking on an Innovation […]
“The original management consultant was Frederick Taylor, who prided himself in having discovered the “one best way” which would be delivered by “first-class men”. These assumptions, made in 1911, are still dominant today. Best practice is today’s “one best way” and recruiters, HR and hiring managers spend months and months searching for today’s “first-class men”. […]
“When we talk about building capabilities by design, there are a set of four core capabilities that you should keep in mind: Designed for self-sufficiency: Enable an environment where the business user is capable of acquiring, blending, presenting, and visualizing their data discoveries. IT needs to move away from being command and control to being […]
“The far-reaching impact of the technology revolution of 2007 with the launch of the Apple iPhone is not to be underestimated. Across every industry, Apple has had a profound influence through the psychological effect of how consumers expect technology to interact with them. People now expect good design as part of their visual communication and […]
“84 percent of employees are “matrixed” to some extent, meaning they serve on multiple teams” Gallup Report: “State of the American Workplace.” Like me, you’ve probably worked on some highly functional OSS teams as well as some dysfunctional ones. Perhaps you’ve even worked with teams that have had elements of both. Today I reflect on […]
Since reading the first book on this list, I’ve become a very avid and wide-ranging reader. The seeds sown by the book list below have immensely helped enrich the content you see here on the PAOSS blog and other PAOSS content. These are the books that have most inspired me or influenced my thinking. Sometimes […]
When you’ve just implemented a new OSS, what does the training look like? A 2-3 week classroom course series? A train-the-trainer series, which then trickles down to the workforce? If this is what your OSS training looks like (or even closely resembles), then this is madness. Unfortunately, this is the model that I’ve seen most […]
The following quick checklist will give you a feel for whether your OSS is too complex for general users: Who are the personas that interact with your OSS (give those personas names and attributes to give life to them) What are they trying to achieve with your OSS (what specific use cases do they fulfil) […]
Something dawned on me recently – People who want to save money don’t want to spend money. That statement has more profound implications for the world of OSS than you might initially think. Let me explain. If someone’s main priority is to save money, what are the chances that they’ll spend money to buy a […]
Let’s say you act for a service provider and the diagram below represents the number of variations you could offer to customers – the number that are technically supported by your solution. That’s 13,824,000 colours. By comparison, the following diagram contains just 20 colours: If I asked you what colours are in the upper diagram, […]
I’ve been promising to release an OSS Call for Innovation, a manifesto of what OSS can become – a manifesto that also describes areas where exponential improvements are just waiting to happen . It can be found here: https://passionateaboutoss.com/oss-call-for-innovation/ And you’ll also notice that it’s a new top-level menu item here on PAOSS. Each time […]
OSS tend to be powerful software suites that can do millions of things. Experts at the vendors / integrators know how to pull the puppet’s strings and make it dance. As a reader of PAOSS, chances are that you are one of those experts. I’ve sat through countless vendor demonstrations, but I’m sure you’ll still […]
