Crabby at Team Action Week Baltimore 2010

Back from one of the most successful and best attended Team Action Weeks in years!  So, why would that make me crabby (ill-tempered)?  It wasn’t me that was crabby; it was all the sumptuous delights I ate that consisted of crab.  In Baltimore, being one of the crab capitals of the world, just about every restaurant and pub has their own variation of crab cakes.  But it doesn’t end there – fried soft-shelled crabs, crab and cheese dip, crab legs, crabs in the shell to be cracked and eaten, various types of crab soup…and more sea food delights, too, such as one of my favorites, steamed little-neck clams with drawn butter!

But I did make some members crabby with a suggestion I had.  During the week we had meetings with members of other industry groups and the question of what is the difference between a Product and a Service arose.  Thankfully, we do have some guidance on the different views of each, which can be found in…

A SID "Golden Nugget" at... http://www.tmforum.org/community/groups/information_framework_sid/wiki/product-service-nugget.aspx

And the latest version of the Product Lifecycle Managment document TR153, which shows a detailed email example that depicts the associations among Products, Services, and Resources at… http://www.tmforum.org/community/groups/product_lifecycle_management/forum/t/5891.aspx

The discussion often then leads to the difference between the two types (subclasses) of Service, Customer Facing Service (CFS) and Resource Facing Service (RFS).  Some of us think that if the Service Configuration Aggregate Business Entity, for which there are two long-standing but unimplemented contributions, was developed, then RFS would meet its demise.  This would then negate the need for a CFS since it would be a solitary subclass of Service, simplifying the SID quite a bit.

The reason for this thought is that those of us who work in the provisioning world believe there is a lot that must be added to RFS to support the configuration and activation of Services.  Service Configuration would fit satisfy these requirements.  Today, there is only a simple association between RFS and Resource.  There is no indication of what action is to be taken on a Resource, such as register, assign, allocate, and so forth.  And, often, these actions must be completed in some sequence.  In some cases, more than one of the same Resource must be acted upon.  Take a look at the contributions and see what you think.  They can be found at…

http://collab.tmforum.org/sf/sfmain/do/go/artf1438?nav=1&selectedTab=associations

This week I am doing the London Training Road Show, then home next week, at least until Friday, when I leave for China again.  Stay tuned!