From PoC to OSS sandpit

You all know I’m a fan of training operators in OSS sandpits (and as apprenticeships during the build phase) rather than a week or two of classroom training at the end of a project.

To reduce the re-work in building a sandpit environment, which will probably be a dev/test environment rather than a production environment, I like to go all the way back to the vendor selection process.
From PoC to OSS sandpit

Running a Proof of Concept (PoC) is a key element of vendor selection in my opinion. The PoC should only include a small short-list of pre-selected solutions so as to not waste time of operator or vendor / integrator. But once short-listed, the PoC should be a cut-down reflection of the customer’s context. Where feasible, it should connect to some real devices / apps (maybe lab devices / apps, possibly via a common/simple interface like SNMP). This takes some time on both sides to set up, but it shows how easily (or not) the solution can integrate with the customer’s active network, BSS, etc. It should be specifically set up to show the device types, alarm types, naming conventions, workflows, etc that fit into the customer’s specific context. That allows the customer to understand the new OSS in terms they’re familiar with.

And since the effort has been made to set up the PoC, doesn’t it make sense to make further use of it and not just throw it away? If the winning bidder then leaves the PoC environment in the hands of the customer, it becomes the sandpit to play in. The big benefit for the winning bidder is that hopefully the customer will have less “what if?” questions that distract the project team during the implementation phase. Questions can be demonstrated, even if only partially, using the sandpit environment rather than empty words.

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