Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
“…good argument for a merged OSS/BSS, wouldn’t you say?” John Malecki. The question above was posed in relation to Friday’s post about the currency and relevance of OSS compared with research reports, analyses and strategic plans as well as how to extend OSS longevity. This is a brilliant, multi-faceted question from John. My belief is […]
“A long, long time ago Dennis Haslinger told me that most of the most serious mistakes I would make in life would be bad ego decisions. I have found that to be true.” Gary Halbert. OSS is an industry filled with highly intelligent people. In every country I’ve visited to work on OSS assignments, perhaps […]
Dark data is the name for data that is collected but never used. lt’s said that 96-98% of all data is dark data (not that I can confirm or deny those claims). Dark data forms the bottom layer in the DIKW hierarchy below (image sourced from here). What would the dark data percentage be within […]
“There’s some things that I’ve challenged my team to do. We have to be faster than the web scale players and that sounds audacious. I tell them you can’t you can’t go to the bus station and catch a bus that’s already left the station by getting on a bus. We have to be faster […]
Yesterday’s post spoke of how the accumulation of features was limiting us to small, incremental change. The diagram below re-tells that story: You’ve probably noticed that microservices are the big buzz in our industry. They’re perceived as being the big white hope for our future. I have my reservations though. If you’re at t0 in […]
The diagram below provides a time-sequence view of how tech-debt accumulation eventually strangles new OSS feature releases unless the drastic measures described are taken. At start-up (t0), the system is brand new and has no legacy to maintain, so all effort can be dedicated to delivering new features (or products) as well as testing to […]
Are your OSS better today than they were 5 years ago? (or 10, 15, 20 years depending on how long you’ve been in the industry) Your immediate reaction to this question is probably going to be, “Yes!” After all, you and your peers have put so much effort into your OSS in the last 5 […]
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 […]
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” Bill Gates. The pervading OSS business case paradigm is to seek cost-out by introducing automation that reduces head-count – […]
“Moonshot thinking is about making something 10x better. This forces you to throw away the existing assumptions and create something bold and new. Reality will eat into your 10x. At the end of the process it may only be 2x, but that’s still amazing.” Brian Jansen‘s Book Summary: “Bold: How To Go Big, Create Wealth, […]
When looking at a telco org chart, where does the highest staff turnover tend to occur? Contact centres? Network Operations? The fact that these two groups tend to have the highest turnover indicates that their employers see them as expendable resources. They’ll never come out and say it directly, but actions speak louder than words. […]
Regardless of whose estimates you read, OSS is a multi billion industry. However, based on the relatively infrequent signing of new vendor deals, it’s safe to say that only a very small percentage of those billions are ever “in play.” In other words, OSS tend to be very sticky, in part because they’re so difficult […]
“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 […]
Guns don’t kill people, people do. Similarly, Technology doesn’t kill OSS projects, people do… Actually people with technology do. The following shows the escalation of global CAPEX allocated by CSPs over the last thirty years (in current currency).. apart from a few brief years around the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The CAPEX uplift also represents […]
“What percentage of the work you do each day is work where the process (the ‘right answer’) is known? Jobs where you replicate a process instead of inventing one… The place where we can create the most value is when we do a job where exploration and a new solution is what’s needed. Not rote, […]
OSS is a powerful multi-purpose tool, much like a hammer. If OSS is my only tool, do I see all problems as nails that I have to drive home with my OSS? The downside of this is that it then needs to be designed, built, integrated, tested, released, supported, upgraded, data curated and maintained. The […]
“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 […]
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 […]
Have you noticed all the recent headlines about the big, iconic brands in our industry struggling to make targets, cutting headcounts, etc.? This covers vendors and service providers alike. As a complete generalisation: Vendors are going backwards Traditional CSPs are going backwards Profit decline means projects and investments in OSS can only be trending downwards […]
“The only way to get rid of Dirty Tickets of Work (DToW) is to get rid of Tickets of Work (ToW)” DToW is terminology used in Telstra to indicate that incorrect information has been entered into the ToW or where the field tech hasn’t been able to complete the ToW as originally designed / planned. […]
