Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
“You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.” George S. Patton. Long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with the use of Seth Godin’s thrashing principle in OSS to attempt to get a scope locked in and developed against. The reality is that despite all the […]
“Inspiration is much more likely to develop from the habit of consistently paying attention to life’s small moments.” Robert Maurer, from his book, “The Spirit of Kaizen: Creating Lasting Excellence One Small Step at a Time.” As we all know, OSS projects are a combination of people, process and technology. However, since most of us […]
“The Toyota production system has been built on the practice and evolution of this scientific approach. By asking and answering ‘why’ five times, we can get to the real cause of the problem, which is often hidden behind more obvious symptoms.” Eric Ries, in his book, “The Lean Startup.” Some time ago, I prepared a […]
“Thrashing: tweaking, updating, revising, sometimes even major surgery; essential, but when to do it? Amateur: all at the end. Pro: early.” Seth Godin in his book, “Linchpin.” One of the biggest challenges facing a new OSS project is gaining a workable and binding set of requirements on which to build a solution. There are all […]
“Most systems deal with complexity by adding more – more systems, more measures, more internal meetings, more units, more custom products, more unique processes, more new initiatives, more coordinators at the interfaces, and on and on. Our belief is that for more companies, the antidote to escalating complexity – and to the greater distance between […]
“A while ago our world exploded. The environment and the world of towns and cities and families and communities blew apart, along with the world of ideas and information, of entertainment and communication, of politics and diplomacy, and of course the world of businesses and organisations. It’s hard to date when the explosion started, but […]
“A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong.” Tecumseh. I have an interesting dilemma to pose for you today. Let’s say you have a migration to undertake that involves your field work-force. The migration requires the re-direction of customer services from one destination to a new destination via re-patching at various points […]
“Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.” James A. Michener. In a recent post, I posed the question about whether we would soon no longer need network engineers. This was slightly cheeky of me. Today I shall note some caveats on posing such a bold question, as well as providing my humble opinions […]
“Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don’t let them take you ALIVE.” Sid Vicious. In many previous posts (including “A new category of OSS“), I’ve pondered how network virtualisation will disrupt the status-quo within OSS. If, in the […]
“Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” M. Scott Peck. I was recently discussing the […]
“When you hire somebody to cut your lawn, you don’t give them a list of all the blades of grass in your yard and the length to cut each one to (prescription), you tell them to make it look nice (intent) and they figure out the rest. Intent-based networking emphasizes the “cut my lawn” interface […]
“Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.” Paul Theroux. As the domain name says, I’m passionate about OSS. However, I’m starting to wonder whether its reputation outside of OSS fanatics (and there are many!) is on the nose to such an extent that the term […]
“My Ph.D. was based on research and development of new breakthrough technologies. As a scientist, Dr. Andersen instructed us to use our minds, training and skills to solve complex and hard scientific problems. If one solves easy problems, then hundreds of people can do the same. You will differentiate yourself by solving complex, yet big, […]
“Google did a great job hacking the Web to create search – and then monetizing search with advertising. And Apple did a great job humanizing hardware and software so that formerly daunting computers and applications could become consumer-friendly devices – even a lifestyle brand.” Douglas Rushkoff. Okay, so OSS probably won’t become a lifestyle brand […]
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” Alan Kay. Something really intrigues me… In the not too distant future, assuming a majority of organisations are hosted on service provider infrastructure (ie XaaS) rather than running in-house infrastructure, does this imply the number of customers for hardware (compute/storage/networks) will significantly reduce? […]
“If you are constantly fire-fighting, you have the impression that you are surrounded by many, many problems… However, careful analysis will point to a few core problems that will solve all the fires.” Eliyahu M. Goldratt in his book, “It’s Not Luck” Have you ever worked on OSS projects/programs that seemed to have infernos blazing […]
“To be successful, the Chief Information Officer must be seen as a peer level thought leader, partnering with other C-level executives to visualize and drive the digital agenda for each company. They need to combine vision, strategy, technology governance and talent, to exploit digital opportunities and move the culture toward a digital business viewpoint.” Annie […]
“Many OSS systems were initially not linked to each other and often required manual intervention. For example, consider the case where a customer wants to order a new telephone service. The ordering system would take the customer’s details and details of their order, but would not be able to configure the telephone exchange directly — […]
“Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three – and paradise is when you have none.” Doug Larson. Will there come a time when telco services are simply like every other utility – a unit of service (ie Mb) that a residential user (and […]
“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.” Brian Tracy. I often talk about the need to provide training and learning opportunities for customers […]
