“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In setting the direction for a nation, democracy (the weight of numbers winning out) appears to have merits (not withstanding Roosevelt’s comment about the voters choosing wisely).
On an OSS project, democracy can quickly lead to stagnation.
Democracy has a place in the requirement capture phase, where every person has the right to provide their list of requirements. However, during the delivery phase, it can mortally wound the project.
If your project has stakeholders across multiple business units, the chances are that each business unit has fundamentally conflicting priorities from your OctopOSS project. A stalemate in the definition phase will generate additional meetings, document reviews, re-reviews and refusals to approve or authorise milestone deliverables.
In these cases, there also needs to be an element of dictatorship, where someone high enough in the organisation can chart a direction that is best fit for the organisation. This has been a clear point of positive difference for the corporate cultures in certain Asian CSPs where I’ve helped with OSS implementations.
When establishing your stakeholder matrix and governance model, ensure you have a pathway to overcome a democracy’s right to veto.
Have you developed other ways to avoid political stalemates on your OctopOSS projects?
If you’re a technologist (eg enterprise architect, developer, BA, tech PM, CTO, etc) who has been tasked with implementing significant technological and business transformation in
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Over the years, I’ve often referred to The Corkscrew Analogy or Momentum Spiral to describe a mindset of incremental improvement that’s needed to keep an
We’ve embarked on a journey of trying to plan for the future of OSS/BSS, not by predicting the future, but by seeking ways to be
Here at Passionate About OSS, we are exactly that – Passionate About OSS (Operational Support Systems). We’re also passionate about BSS, NMS, or any other names you call the tools that help to operationalise your network.
