Potential OSS failures aren’t always technical

I recently attended an event where a brainstorming question was posed about how a particular next-gen OSS concept might fail. Interesting exercise!

There were a lot of super-clever technical people in the room. The brainstorming of ideas was a fascinating one. We dived deeply into the experiences of many of the technical people in the room and all the potential technical reasons for failure.

But I was left with an overwhelming feeling that:

    1. Most, if not all, of those technical hurdles could be overcome if given enough resources
    2. None of the more likely causes of failure were brought up, including:
      • People-related factors (or organisational change factors) such as resistance to change, a shortage of skills in a nascent area, stakeholder management, lack of “champion” support if momentum slows, inability to reach consensus on scope / design, etc
      • Financial viability factors such as inability to deliver on time/cost/scope, parallel operations and maintenance of legacy, lower additional benefit than predicted in the business case

That’s where I’ve noticed a greater proportion of OSS project failures anyway. Does this align with your experiences?

If this article was helpful, subscribe to the Passionate About OSS Blog to get each new post sent directly to your inbox. 100% free of charge and free of spam.

Our Solutions

Share:

Most Recent Articles

No telco wants to buy an OSS/BSS

When you’re a senior exec in a telco and you’ve been made responsible for allocating resources, it’s unlikely that you ever think, “gee, we really

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.