Using The Business Process Framework (eTOM) as a Checklist

I thought I would continue chatting about the eTOM in this edition of the blog, based on an experience I had this past week with a member.

But, before I get into the details of using the eTOM as a check list, I know I have a responsibility to chat a little about my culinary experience.  I spent last week in the Washington, DC area, home of some great seafood.  One of my weaknesses is a fondness for little neck clams.  So, I indulged and had a delightful meal of linguine adorned by about a dozen of these little bivalves.  Another weakness involves soft shell crabs, which are hard to find.  Of course, when I found crab two-ways on a restaurant’s menu, and one way was tempura battered soft shells, you know the rest!  No links to web sites this time, but you can perform a quick internet search to find these two.

You probably know by now that I have a checklist of menu items as I play the role of vagabond around the world.  Well, I also carry the eTOM along with me, because you never know when it can be used as a checklist, too.  When training/consulting I often work with members who have process requirements associated with introducing new technologies and/or offerings.  Often current process models don’t completely provide support for these requirements.  This is where the eTOM can be used to support them.

I ran into a similar requirement last week.  In this case, the operator’s business model was changing somewhat.  The operator is taking over parts of, or entire processes, that are currently performed by a partner.  For example, the complete resolution of a customer’s problem could involve assessing the performance of the network.  The business people involved in the planned processes are not familiar with the eTOM and, due to project time timelines, there was no time to provide eTOM training to them.

The project team working with the business people wanted to make certain that the processes included all the necessary tasks.  In the example stated above, this would include all the tasks necessary to measure the performance of the network.  So, what the project team planned to do was use the eTOM Level 3 processes and their descriptions and/or draft Level 4 processes as a checklist.  As the business people explain their planned processes using their own non-eTOM terminology, the project team compares them to the eTOM.  The collective set of L3s that represent the decomposition of a L2, typically cover the full life cycle of some key business entity, such as resource (network) performance.  Thus, the comparison helps ensure all the eTOM-equivalent tasks are being performed.  If any tasks are missing the eTOM processes are used as “prompts” to begin discussions on the missing tasks.

The processes are represented by scenarios, for example, no dial tone, excessive dropped calls, no internet connectivity, and so forth.  These are very specialized and could be viewed as business use cases, because they achieve a defined business goal and are represented using swim lane diagrams.  To reduce the possibility of a large number of duplicated task level processes, the team mapped the scenarios to eTOM L2 processes.  This facilitated the development of, and comparison to, generalized processes that can be specialized as necessary to satisfy scenario-specific requirements.

One other aspect of the eTOM was considered.  The applicable Operations Support & Readiness processes are also used as a checklist to ensure that all the L3 tasks that support and enable the L2/L3 tasks are included as scenarios.

I’ll be off on vacation from 24^th Jun through 3^rd Jul, but will be back to work after that.  So, look for the next blog after I spend a week doing a TM Forum Training Road Show the week of 4^th Jul in Bonn Germany.