Back in China this week, not teaching, but working with a client. Missed my Chinese food as I haven’t had the pleasure since when I was here in December 2009. I made up for that one night by trying a new dish – braised pork with preserved vegetables…tasty. Anyone ever eaten bird stomach? There is such a vast variety of food, which varies from province to province, that I could spend quite a bit of time here before I eat the same dish twice. Although I do have my favorites!
Variety, that’s the key word for this narrative. In a previous blog I wrote about students wanting to use the frameworks in a variety of ways. In case you are interested here is the link to that blog… http://www.tmforum.org/community/blogs/tmforum_training/archive/2009/11/24/the-solution-frameworks-ngoss-melting-pot.aspx . A few examples were provided, but thought you may be interested in many others. I won’t go into all the details here, but will provide a couple of examples and also point you to a guide book that contains many others. Getting started with the frameworks is typically dependent on the type of project being undertaken and the project’s requirements.
One type of project that often is carried out today involves planning for a new technology or updates to an existing technology. Often, existing processes that support this type of project are out of date, especially if a new technology has not been introduced for some time, may be specialized for an existing technology, or simply have not been documented. Here is where the Business Process Framework (eTOM) comes into play. Rather than start from scratch to develop a checklist of the tasks that need to be performed to introduce the new technology, the eTOM processes can be used as a starting point. Talk about saving a lot of time and money!
New technologies enable new offerings that require provisioning within an organizations infrastructure. In this case a project may involve enhancing existing applications or procuring new applications. In either case, not only the eTOM, but the other three frameworks can be leveraged. The Information Framework (SID) can be used to state information requirements and a model that enables easy addition of the new offerings and the services to be provisioned without the need to make major changes to a database or application. The Application Framework (TAM) can be used to define application-specific requirements. The Integration Framework can be used to identify necessary business services and interfaces used to construct application(s) and facilitate interoperability with other applications. Quite a bit of time and money saved with these uses, too.
The guide book GB942 – TM Forum Framework Mappings http://www.tmforum.org/Documents/GB942MAPSolutionFrameworks/40192/article.html contains examples of many other uses of the frameworks. It also describes the relationships among the frameworks, so that a project can get the most use out of them.
But, suppose you just want to get started learning about the frameworks. What is a good way to proceed? First would be to read the Getting Started set of guide books associated with each framework (the TAM today is only a single document, but has a great introductory section). Next step is to decide upon the domain or domains of interest to you. It would be quite a daunting task to attempt to learn all the frameworks at once or even a single framework.
The frameworks are all organized by domain. There are seven they all have in common – Market/Sales, Product, Customer, Service, Resource, Supplier/Partner, and Enterprise. The SID and Integration Framework contain an extra domain, called Common Business Entities. Pick the domain(s) and focus on the contents. For example, if business processes associated with networks is of interest, start with the eTOM Resource domain processes. If you are interested in how these processes are related to areas in the other frameworks, the mappings in GB942MAP will help focus on domains of interest in the other frameworks. In fact, you may not be interested in an entire domain. Each framework is organized into cohesive components in each domain, such as eTOM process elements, that allow you to narrow your focus within each domain. The mappings also show the relationships among these key components.
A poster is being developed by a member that shows these key components by domain. In the Resource example, this means that you would be able to see in one grouping all the eTOM Level 2 processes (core business processes), all the SID Level 1 Aggregate Business Entities (groups of entities), all the TAM Level 1 Application Areas (procurable applications), and all the categories of business services that represent the Resource domain. The poster will provide a graphical view to help you get started.
Off to Melbourne on my next training assignment…
Posted
02-11-2010 7:13 AM
by
John Reilly