Does the SDF program address your business challenges ?

Johan Vandenberghe — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:29:35 GMT

Are you a service provider with a highly distributed service environment ? Then you may be able to support the validation of the end-to-end service lifecycle management solutions that are envisioned by the SDF program.

The SDF Team is looking for Service Provider Use Cases to validate. If you contribute a use case which expresses your business challenges in this context, then you may speed up the availability of a solution.

Why re-inventing the wheel ? Or hot water !

Johan Vandenberghe — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:29:25 GMT

The SDF team is on the path to develop the SDF specification as envisonned in the SDF Reference Model (TR 139) and SDF Reference Architecture (TMF 061). The team wants to leverage existing standards, technologies and/or product implementations in an attemp to fast track the specification development.

Are you interested to become part of the end-to-end service lifecycle management solution ?

Read more on our wiki page.

Is perfection necessary?

Kenneth Dilbeck — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:36:26 GMT

Here is postulate I would like to test. I don’t think industry is looking for a perfect solution from the SDF Team.

The SDF effort was launched because there was perceived need for an industry position on how to address managing Service Delivery in this new world we are living in were traditional service delivery is no longer viewed as adequate and new business models are being developed and implemented on a daily basis.

I chose to emphasize “position”. I think the need is for someone to be bold enough to put a stake in the ground and say, ”Based on a what we know today here are the needs, here is a way to address those needs.” Perfection will only come through people attempting to implement and providing feedback on what is right and what is wrong. The Business Process Framework (eTOM) was not perfect when it was first published it was a work in progress. If the team had waited until the results were perfect before publishing it as ready for use, it probably would still be waiting to be published. Not only because of the scope of the framework but because the business it was modeling is changing.

I think it is important for us to realize that especially in the Service Delivery problem domain the landscape is shifting every day. Any solution we propose will more than likely not address all the possible business scenarios that it will be tested against in the future. The solution will have to be adapted and changed as the business needs change.

The key is to strike a balance. The “stake in the ground” needs to be well thought out and be creditable but it will not be perfect. It will be flawed and require adjustments.

The SDF team now has good understanding of the problem domain and this next phase is moving towards answering the question “how do you address those needs”. As we move into this phase I think it will be important to keep in mind, whatever we come up with will not be a perfect solution, good enough, will be a great outcome. It would be easy to get side tracked with concerns that we do not have a complete understanding of certain aspects of a proposed solution or worry that a there are gaps. There will be gaps. Some we will know about and some people will tell us about after they start working with it.

The SDF team is composed of arguably some of the world’s foremost on managing Service Delivery. The industry chartered us to give them a stake in the ground, a position they can start from and validate through their use. I think it is very important for us to meet the deliverables and schedule we have set for this phase. We have to do an adequate job in each of the phases we have laid out but the focus really needs to be on the final deliverable. We need adequate uses cases but we will never have the complete set of use cases. Analysis needs to adequate but will never be complete. The industry is looking for a position, a stake in the ground and if we don’t delivery it, they will look elsewhere.

Just some of my thoughts on the challenge in front of the group in getting from mining the industry, to workbook to specification.

Software Enabled Services (SES) Management Solution

Does the SDF program address your business challenges ?

Why re-inventing the wheel ? Or hot water !

Is perfection necessary?