“When a project appears to be in limbo, in a permanent holding pattern, where sunk costs meet opportunity costs, where no one can figure out what to do…
Cancel it.
Cancel it with a week’s notice.
One of two things will happen:
A. A surge of support and innovation will arrive, and it won’t be stuck any more.
B. You’ll follow through and cancel it, and you won’t be stuck any more.
It costs focus and momentum to carry around the stalled. Let it go.”
Seth Godin on his blog here.
OSS projects have a tendency to get so big and complex and with so many dependencies that they can stagnate. When projects stagnate, we have a tendency of treating them with contempt or cynicism don’t we? We treat them this way even when we’re involved, so you know that outsiders are treating them with even more contempt and cynicism.
So Seth’s concept is an interesting one. I haven’t tried his technique before.
Have you? Did it achieve your desired outcomes?
Did it rally the troops? Did it clear the way for assignment of resources onto better projects, Darwinian-style? Or did it just throw away the last vestiges of momentum and all sunk costs?
Have you ever had an OSS or BSS project that’s impacted by poor data quality? The problem of data integrity gets raised on almost every
“One of my favorite things about designing software is designing the defaults. The defaults define the experience for everyone out of the box. And, therefore,
Have you ever been tasked with mapping out the processes for the telco you work for? Either as a way of documenting current state, or
In the last week alone, I’ve had two potent reminders that the world of OSS is simply (pun intended) too complex. This manifests in many
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.
