If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry: Navigating the life-cycle of OSS transformations

So, if you're feeling bemused by your current OSS implementation, join us on this light-hearted journey through the wacky world of OSS challenges from infancy to today.

Integration: When OSS Platforms Just Won't Play Nice

Can you remember back into your childhood days when you'd try to jam a square peg into a round hole? If I’m being truthful, it’s just too long ago to remember, but let’s go with it anyway. Well, it turns out that those kindergarten experiences were unknowingly preparing you for a career in OSS implementation. Integrating OSS platforms is like a never-ending game of mismatched puzzle pieces, where you don’t even have the jigsaw box picture to refer back to. Platforms from different vendors, with different data formats and APIs, often refuse to communicate with each other. An OSS implementation team is like the teacher / diplomat trying to inspire, cajole and even broker peace between warring platforms (and people in some cases).

Scalability: Growing Pains and Periods of Awkwardness

It would be nice if OSS systems could grow smoothly, consistently and predictably. In reality, OSS scalability is more like a series of adolescent growth spurts. One minute you’re enjoying childhood and the next minute your voice changes and so does everything else. As networks expand and change, OSS platforms must also evolve. This can lead to unplanned re-sizing, upgrades, modifications, and even entirely new use-cases. Periods of major change often come with an awkwardness as you learn about your new situation and adapt to your new normal.

Data Quality: The Migration into Early Adulthood and Information Management

When implementing OSS, you'll soon realise that data quality is a bit like the College years and early career. It’s a time when you’re still trying to figure out how the world works, yet still expecting to plot a sensible path into the future. Inconsistent data formats, incomplete records, mismatches between disparate data sets and duplicate entries. Once it’s all carefully collected and prepared, you then need to ensure it all stays coherent into the future because your entire project team relies on it!

Managing People and Change: Growing, Rising through the Ranks and Starting to Lead

How could we forget the human factor? Exactly! Yet, so many projects do overlook or underestimate the importance of change management on an OSS implementation. Where would we be without an endless capacity for miscommunication, misunderstandings, fear of and resistance to change, interpersonal relationships, factions and more? OSS implementations can quickly devolve as teams struggle to navigate complex systems, ambitions and ever-changing requirements. It's like a chess game, but without the pre-defined rules about what piece can move where, leaving everyone questioning what on earth they're supposed to be doing individually and collectively. As you implement more OSS transformations, you start to pick up on the many pitfalls and must start to lead your colleagues around them.

Legacy Systems: Ageing Gracefully and Dealing with the Past

Embarking on an OSS implementation can feel like stepping back in time, into your youth. You'll encounter legacy systems that you might look back fondly on, like your play-filled days before the Internet… And then when you start to work with them again, you begin to recall why they’re called legacy systems and wish they really were already consigned to your past. These technological relics are still functioning (barely), but integrating them to modern OSS platforms is like trying to play a VHS video cassette through a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player. A lot of manipulation and reconfiguration is required!

Every OSS is on a constant lifecycle of evolution. Different skills are required for different seasons and stages. At SunVizion, we spend each day helping to guide our clients along their OSS evolution. We’d be delighted to help you along your journey, too.