Team Action Week Lisbon 2008: Strong Collaboration Moves TM Forum Technical Programs Forward

High attendance and interest spur TM Forum standards work.

TM Forum’s Team Action Week was held from January 25 to February 1 in Lisbon, Portugal, with over 200 members in attendance for the first time since 2001. About 30 percent of attendees were from service provider companies, a testament to their views on the importance of moving TM Forum standards work forward. Over 70 of the attendees were newcomers to Team Action Week, far more than at past events, a strong indication from the industry of continued growth in adoption of TM Forum’s work.

The week consisted of over 80 team meetings plus the NGOSS Users Group, which played to a full house in its new half-day format. Many of the meetings were joint meetings, with multiple teams collaborating to address alignment of programs and ensure consistency of outputs. The general feeling at the end of the week from the technical community was of great satisfaction in how TM Forum standards and guidelines are truly excellent pieces of work that complement each other and how the work is being widely used now in real deployments to successfully address industry challenges.

“This was one of our best attended and busiest Team Action Weeks since the industry downturn a few years ago, and it was so encouraging to see so many companies represented at the event,” says Ian Best, Vice President, Collaboration Programs, TM Forum. “If I were to sum up the week in one word it would have to be ‘collaboration’; not just within the teams but between the different teams as well. It really is a strong indicator of so many people working together to move forward the work of TM Forum. I would like to express my thanks to everyone who supported Team Action Week, but a special thanks goes out to all of the team leaders who put so much work into the event and throughout the year.”

Some specific activities of interest from Team Action Week Lisbon include:

• The TM Forum Interface Program made good progress toward agreeing on their project charter, which should be completed in the next few weeks.
• The Technical Program Committee has agreed to take on several new responsibilities, including taking a new role of coordinating work across all of the Collaboration Community teams.
• The Service Provider Leadership Council has started discussions on how it can become more effective within the Collaboration Community and is in the process of re-chartering with new responsibilities for driving the content of the program.
• The Service Delivery Framework team had a successful week of team meetings and a successful cross-standards body meeting.
• The End User Remote Device Management group had 4 days of well-attended meetings and successfully launched two Catalyst projects in areas that are new to TM Forum.
• The Cable Interest Group met and shared eTOM experiences, met with the OSS/J team and planned for a CIG extension to cover SIs & Suppliers.
• The eTOM/ITIL group met to further their joint positioning. An itSMF representative attended Team Action Week for the first time.
• GBA and IPDR, both new additions to TM Forum in 2007, held meetings at Team Action Week and worked to integrate their programs more fully with TM Forum programs.
• 9 Catalyst Projects are confirmed for Management World in Nice, with 6 of these teams meeting at Team Action Week.
• Content Encounter met with new team members and set its demonstration plans for Management World 2008 in Nice

And don’t forget to mark your calendars for our next Team Action Week, taking place from June 23-27, 2008 in Tysons Corner, Virginia!