Minimise the tentacles on the OctopOSS. Keep it simple
“In the struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically been the hard assets that they owned and controlled.” James Surowiecki. Yesterday we spoke of the different types of interface “objects” such as probes, robots, MDDs (Mediation Device Drivers), etc […]
“If the “best of breed” solutions are all very “different” there may be a great deal of training and overhead that may not be there if they are all from a smaller set of vendors with a similar “technology”.” Richard Bragg. During a recent LinkedIn Group discussion about the comparisons of Best-of-breed versus single-vendor OSS […]
“Regression testing means re-testing an application after its code has been modified to verify that it still functions correctly. Regression testing consists of re-running existing test cases and checking that code changes did not break any previously working functions, inadvertently introduce errors or cause earlier fixed issues to reappear. These test cases should be run […]
“What would we expect to find if we examined the brain scans of people with high versus average IQ scores? We might picture the active brain of an Einstein as a hotbed of smoldering colors ”but we’d be wrong. Neurologist Richard Restak summarized a UCLA study that compared individuals with high IQs to those with […]
“[Hermann Ebbinghaus’s] forgetting curve describes the exponential loss of information that one has learned. The sharpest decline occurs in the first twenty minutes and the decay is significant through the first hour. The curve levels off after about one day.” Wikipedia. As discussed in Ted Gannan’s recent blog, “Job-related training is an exercise in helping […]
“Life is full of surprises and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns.” Condoleeza Rice. Product and Service Lifecycle Management (PSLM) can be a key differentiator* for competing CSPs. In turn, the […]
“The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.” Stephen Sondheim. I won’t for one moment try to convince you that there is a single right answer to your OSS puzzle like there is for crosswords as Stephen Sondheim suggests. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are […]
“We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.” Galileo Galilei. When you’re a network operator who is following a workflow to do a particular task, it’s quite likely that you’ll use one or more tools in a suite that includes OSS, BSS, NMS, EMS and more. Of the workflows […]
“APIs are everywhere today and can be a great building block of modern applications. But all too often APIs are not truly great. Rather than love your API, developers curse it.” John Musser in relation to this slide deck. Yesterday’s post was about the importance of having an API that’s easy to integrate with for […]
“Remember: An API is a journey, not a destination” John Musser in this slide-deck entitled “Ten Reasons Developers Hate Your API“. API (Application Programming Interface) are the mechanisms for getting data into and out of your OSS. Since an OSS doesn’t do anything useful without data, APIs are effectively the life-blood of an OSS. Yet, […]
“Don’t marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can’t live without.” James C. Dobson. A reader recently asked a great question about vendor lock-in. OSS tend to be very sticky (ie it’s very hard to change suppliers once an OctopOSS’s tentacles have spread throughout the CSP’s operations) so […]
“Interruption is the enemy of productivity.” Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson in Rework. OctopOSS are tightly entangled beasts. There are so many complexities that collaboration with your fellow project members is essential. But too many OSS projects get bogged down due to different forms of communications – meetings, documentation, conferences, chatting with colleagues and […]
“When times get confusing, it’s easy to revert to the habits that got you here. More often than not, that’s precisely the wrong approach. The very thing that got you here is the thing that everyone who’s here is doing, and if that’s what it took to get to the next level, no one would […]
“Arrange your list of debts from smallest to largest (making sure you’re meeting the minimum repayments on each). Here’s the trick: attack your smallest debt (say your credit card) by bumping up the repayments, so you can knock it over like a domino as quickly as possible. When it’s paid in full, throw your card […]
My OSS book, entitled “Mastering your OSS” is finally available to the market. Click on the image below to take a closer look. For the next two weeks only, I’m offering an extra US$10 off the purchase price to readers of this blog. Just send me an email or a note via the Contact Page […]
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have […]
“I’d like to get your thoughts on how to execute an OSS transformation program. As the OSS (or the OctopOSS as you put it) is made up of Fulfillment, Assurance and Inventory as major pillars / building blocks, it would be quite a big task implementing all these all at once. Should the program start […]
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Nelson Mandela. In a post from over a year ago entitled “I/O, I/O, it’s off to work I go” I spoke about using advanced techniques for […]
“What’s caused the biggest evolution in SDN is the realization that very few organizations really have the desire, skills and incentives to write a new class of applications to a published API to program the network. These users are outlying use cases compared to the vast majority of organizations just looking to automate IT tasks, […]
“I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you […]
