Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
Well, would you hire a furniture maker as CEO of an OSS vendor? At face value, it would seem to be an odd selection right? There doesn’t seem to be much commonality between furniture and OSS does there? It seems as likely as hiring a furniture maker to be CEO of a car maker? Oh […]
Unfortunately for OSS vendors / integrators, their business models have a dependency (and major risk) on accounts receivable. Investopedia states, “Accounts receivable are amounts of money owed by customers to another entity for goods or services delivered or used on credit but not yet paid for by clients.” One of the earliest OSS projects I […]
OSS can be cumbersome at times. Making change can be difficult. We tend to build layers of protections around them and the networks we manage. I get that. Change can be risky (although the protections are often implemented because the OSS and/or network platforms might not be as robust as they could be). Contrast this […]
A friend of mine has a great saying, “only do what only you can do.” Do you think that this holds true for the companies undergoing digital transformation? Banks are now IT companies. Insurers are IT companies. Car manufacturers are now IT companies. Telcos are, well, some are IT companies. We’ve spoken before about the […]
Is your OSS a single pane of glass, or a single glass of pain? You can tell I’m being a little flippant here. People often (perhaps idealistically) talk about OSS as being the single pane of glass (SPOG) to manage a network. I say “idealistically” for a couple of reasons: There are usually many personas […]
It’s been nearly two decades since I designed my first root-cause analysis (RCA) rule. It was completely reliant on network topology – more specifically, it relied on a network hierarchy to determine which alarms could be suppressed. I had a really interesting discussion today with some colleagues who are using much more modern RCA techniques. […]
“There’s a fable of a man stuck in a flood. Convinced that God is going to save him, he says no to a passing canoe, boat, and helicopter that offer to help. He dies, and in heaven asks God why He didn’t save him. God says, “I sent you a canoe, a boat, and a […]
“Life can be improved by adding, or by subtracting. The world pushes us to add, because that benefits them. But the secret is to focus on subtracting… No amount of adding will get me where I want to be. The adding mindset is deeply ingrained. It’s easy to think I need something else. It’s hard […]
The last few days have been all about organisational structuring to support OSS and digital transformations. Today we take a different tack – a more technical diversion – onto how drones might be relevant to the field of OSS. A friend recently asked for help to look into the use of drones in his archaeological […]
So far this week we’ve been focusing on ways to improve the OSS transformation process. Monday provided 7 models for achieving startup-like efficiency for larger OSS transformations. Tuesday provided suggestions for speeding up the transition from OSS PoC to getting the solution into production, specifically strategies for absorbing an OSS PoC into production. Both of […]
In yesterday’s article, we discussed 7 models for achieving startup-like efficiency on large OSS transformations. One popular approach is to build a proof-of-concept or sandpit quickly on cloud hosting or in lab environments. It’s fast for a number of reasons including reduced number of approvals, faster activation of infrastructure, reduced safety checks (eg security, privacy, […]
Do you work in a large organisation? Have you also worked in smaller organisations? Where have you felt more efficient? I’ve been lucky enough to work on some massive OSS transformations for large T1 telcos. But I’ve always noticed the inefficiency of working on these projects when embedded inside the bureaucracy of the beast. With […]
In the last two posts, we’ve discussed repeatability within the field of OSS implementation – paint-by-numbers vs artisans and then resilience vs precision in delivery practices. Now I’d like you to have a think about how those posts overlay onto this quote by Karl Popper: “Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science.” Every […]
All OSS rely on workflows to make key outcomes happen. Outcomes like activating a customer order, resolving a fault, billing customers, etc. These workflows often touch multiple OSS/BSS products and/or functional capabilities. There’s not always a single-best-way to achieve an outcome. If you’re responsible for your organisation’s workflows do you want to build a paint-by-numbers […]
Have you ever experienced an epic customer experience (CX) fail when dealing a network service operator, like the one I described yesterday? In that example, the OSS/BSS, and possibly the associated people / process, had a direct impact on poor customer experience. Admittedly, that 7 truck-roll experience was a number of years ago now. We […]
In yesterday’s post we talked about the cost of quality. We talked about examples of primary, secondary and tertiary costs of bad data quality (DQ). We also highlighted that the tertiary costs, including the damage to brand reputation, can be one of the biggest factors. I often cite an example where it took 7 truck […]
This week of posts has followed the theme of the cost of quality. Data quality that is. But how do you calculate the cost of bad data quality? Yesterday’s post mentioned starting with PNI (Physical Network Inventory). PNI is the cables, splices / joints, patch panels, ducts, pits, etc. This data doesn’t tend to have […]
The diagram below has some parallels with OSS. The story however is a little long before it gets to the OSS part, so please bear with me. The diagram shows analysis the US Navy performed during WWII on where planes were being shot. The theory was that they should be reinforcing the areas that received […]
“This minimum feature set (sometimes called the “minimum viable product”) causes lots of confusion. Founders act like the “minimum” part is the goal. Or worse, that every potential customer should want it. In the real world not every customer is going to get overly excited about your minimum feature set. Only a special subset of […]
Today’s is something of a heretical post, especially for the believers in ITIL. In the world of OSS, we look to build in layers of resiliency and not layers of redundancy. The following diagram and subsequent text in italics describes a typical ITIL process and is all taken from https://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1074 The sequence of events as shown […]
