Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
Efficiency experts refer to getting to genba (or gemba), a Japanese term for “the real place” or the place where the “real” work gets done. lt’s the place where every movement is vital and any inefficiency or waste is a target for improvement. In OSS, genba resides in two places – the product development and […]
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Vincent Van Gogh. I recently contributed on a vendor’s product design exercise and came away with some ideas that are worth sharing here. We started the process by trying to resolve a problem faced by many OSS customers. The problem related to re-designing […]
“To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” Lao Tzu. There’s an interesting phenomenon in OSS, but probably software development in general, keep adding new features without giving a thought to removing any. This is fine if you’re in a growth phase in terms of resources, budgets / revenues, customers, […]
Last Friday the post, “Managing satellites,” discussed how the satellite OSS concept provides core OSS to work on Telco networks / eTOM models, whereas ITIL / ITSM has become increasingly prevalent for the tools to help service managed service contracts. Does this concept resonate with you regarding management of virtualised networks in terms of satellites […]
In our life and our OSS we’re now bombarded with so much info that it can be overwhelming. We have to understand what really matters to know how to set up the right filters. Have you ever noticed how life in OSS, just like our email inboxes, is an endless stream of activities with a […]
Douglas Stevenson made some great comments on a recent post called, “Managing managed services.” He rightly pointed out that a carrier that builds custom OSS to support each managed service contract is losing sight of what really matters – they’re delivering the tools rather than the services. Precisely! It made me consider this follow-up post […]
In many posts (including this one) I have talked about the need for us as an industry to look beyond the current catch-cries of “differentiation” in OSS proposals: Cost-out More functionality It’s easy to make such bold encouragement in a blog where there are no ramifications for stepping outside the norm. Much harder when actually […]
Managed services contracts are a big source of revenue for many big telcos. There are many variants on what a managed service is but l’ll loosely define it here as a contract between a service provider and an organisation where the organisation delegates some responsibility for running their communication network to the CSP. It could […]
“On Monday this week taxi app Lyft raising a new $1bn round which included $500m from General Motors. Twelve months ago the received wisdom was that Uber was on a tear and it’s competitors would fail and in response to this funding news LA Times wrote a piece questioning whether the ‘winner takes all phenomenon’ that […]
Have you ever built a root-cause algorithm? Root cause is so dependent upon each individual network with all of its nuances so it’s difficult to find one-size-fits-all methods. Individuals can develop the experience and can learn to read the signs and understand the linkages. Machine learning can too. One technique that I find transfers across […]
Question for you: Do your OSS users also use ubiquitous tools like Visio, PowerPoint, Excel and others to help perform their day-to-day workflows? I have two contrasting views on this: POSITIVE: They have carefully specified their needs and they ‘re rightly using the OSS only to do the most important / efficient tasks, using swivel-chairing […]
With the ubiquity of smart phones, when field workers are on site, they often photograph assets to show the state of the network before and /or after their site visit. Many organisations with OSS also have Digital Asset Management (DAM) tools that allow them to store digital assets (images, video, audio, etc) in a central […]
OSS play a part in many activities within CSP environments. Some of those activities are common, some rare, and others still require a large dose of human decision interactions. However, most of those activities will have been done before, more or less. This should mean that OSS have seen it all before (more or less). […]
“Good design is as little design as possible Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.” Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design. I’ve recently had the opportunity to design some OSS user interfaces (UI) again. Our customer […]
Your first answer to the headline question today will probably relate to Bitcoin transactions. That would indeed be a clever answer but there is more potential in blockchain for OSS / BSS than just crypto-currencies. I figure that it could be applicable for the following use cases and probably many more: Obviously billing reconciliation (and […]
“…our research suggests that as many as 45 percent of the activities individuals are paid to perform can be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies. In the United States, these activities represent about $2 trillion in annual wages. Although we often think of automation primarily affecting low-skill, low-wage roles, we discovered that even the highest-paid […]
As someone who is afforded the privilege of seeing many OSS when evaluating vendors, it strikes me that most OSS are designed by Engineers. It seems to me that if a developer hits on a user interface (UI) that can perform the required function then that interface layout will do. After all, Engineers in the […]
“Which 10 technologies do we need that haven’t been invented yet?” In no particular order: Automated checking and correlation of outside plant (and any other data source that doesn’t have programmable interfaces) Order to cash tools for customers of CSPs, not just for the CSPs in the usual use of this metric Knowledge transfer between […]
“3.Our thinking is often constrained by the complexity of the challenges, so which 10 complexities would you like to snap your fingers and remove?” Here are ten ideas: Don’t let Engineers define the requirements 🙂 (I have an Engineering degree, so perhaps I’m included in this list). Just because you CAN deliver a feature doesn’t […]
James Altucher’s Idea Machine concept will form the basis of a series of upcoming posts. An earlier post, “Just 10 ideas” posed 10 questions, one being “What are the 10 things that you’d like to get better at?” From that question, and each of the other questions, I’ll attempt to generate 10 ideas. So, the […]
