For fear of OSS investment

Friday’s post discussed three analogies about the challenges of performing an OSS pivot.

The biggest challenge in initiating the transformation / replacement of any significant OSS is fear. There are many OSS out there whose “owners” want to change and need to change… but fear changing because a significant pivot would mean a “sell the farm” decision.

The fear is completely understandable. These are highly complex projects with so many potential pitfalls that invest massive amounts of resource (time, money, people). The risks can be huge for sponsors / stakeholders / investors. Failure of these projects can be career changing. The upside potential rarely balances the downside risk.

So, the only choice we have is to present pivots that aren’t “bet the farm” decisions.

The delivery approach of a bet the farm pivot tends to look like this:
The Bet-the-farm OSS Transformation Approach

The less risky, dependency-reduced, stepping-stone transformation tends to look a bit like this, but probably with a lot more verticals, as described here:
The Stepping-Stone OSS Transformation Approach

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