How to Document, Benchmark and Optimise Operational Processes

Have you been tasked with: Capturing as-is process flows (eg swim-lane charts or BPMN [Business Process Model and Notation] diagrams) Starting a new project where understanding the current state is important Finding ways to optimise day-to-day activities performed by your team Creating a baseline process to identify automation opportunities Comparing your current processes with recommendations […]

Launch of The Passionate About OSS Podcast

We’re excited to announce the Launch of The Passionate About OSS Podcast. The first batch of five episodes can be found here, with new episodes to be released here on a weekly basis: The Passionate About OSS Podcast The aim of the show is to shine a light on the many brilliant people who work […]

OSS/BSS in the Clouds, updated again

We posted an article in July entitled “OSS / BSS in the clouds,” which looked at the OSS, BSS and related telco infrastructure platforms being offered by AWS, Google, Microsoft and their partners. This followed a number of recent announcements made by the hyperscalers relating to their bigger pushes into telco. It had a particular […]

How to Design Telecommunication Business Process Flows Using eTOM

Introduction to eTOM Have you been tasked with designing process flows for a telecommunication network operator or setting up a business process management regime? Do these include end-to-end (E2E) processes that leverage one (or likely more) of your OSS/BSS tools along the journey? Perhaps you’ve even been tasked with setting a roadmap for OSS/BSS development […]

What’s in your OSS for me?

May I ask you a question?  Do the senior executives at your organisation ever USE your OSS/BSS? I’d love to hear your answer. My guess is that few, if any, do. Not directly anyway. They may depend on reports whose data comes from our OSS, but is that all? Execs are ultimately responsible for signing […]

A billion dollar bid

A few years ago I was lucky enough to be invited to lead a bid. I say lucky because the partner organisations are two of the most iconic firms in the tech industry. The bid was for bleeding-edge work, potentially worth well over a billion dollars. I was a little surprised to be honest. I […]

Over 30 Autonomous Networking User Stories

The following is a set of user stories I’ve provided to TM Forum to help with their current Autonomous Networking initiative. They’re just an initial discussion point for others to riff off. We’d love to get your comments, additions and recommended refinements too. As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Automatically maintain the […]

As a network owner….

….I want to make my network so observable, reliable, predictable and repeatable that I don’t need anyone to operate it. That’s clearly a highly ambitious goal. Probably even unachievable if we say it doesn’t need anyone to run it. But I wonder whether this has to be the starting point we take on behalf of […]

Net Simplicity Score (NSS) gets a little more complex

In last Tuesday’s post, I asked the community here on PAOSS and on TM Forum’s Engage platform for ideas about how you would benchmark complexity. I also provided a reference to an old post that described the concept of a NSS (Net Simplicity Score) for our OSS/BSS. Due to the complexity of factors that contribute to […]

The digital transformation paradox twins

There’s an old adage that “the confused mind always says no.” Consider this from your own perspective. If you’re in a state of confusion about something, are you likely to commit wholeheartedly or will you look to delay / procrastinate? The paradox for digital transformation is that our projects are almost always complex, but complexity […]

What will get your CEO fired? (part 4)

In Monday’s article, we suggested that the three technical factors that could get the big boss fired are probably only limited to: Repeated and/or catastrophic failure (of network, systems, etc) Inability to serve the market (eg offerings, capacity, etc) Inability to operate network assets profitably In that article, we looked closely at a human factor […]

What will get your CEO fired? (part 3)

In Monday’s article, we suggested that the three technical factors that could get the big boss fired are probably only limited to: Repeated and/or catastrophic failure (of network, systems, etc) Inability to serve the market (eg offerings, capacity, etc) Inability to operate network assets profitably In that article, we looked closely at a human factor […]

What will get your CEO fired? (part 2)

In Monday’s article, we suggested that the three technical factors that could get the big boss fired are probably only limited to: Repeated and/or catastrophic failure (of network, systems, etc) Inability to serve the market (eg offerings, capacity, etc) Inability to operate network assets profitably In that article, we looked closely at a human factor […]

A lighter-touch OSS procurement approach (part 3)

We’ve spoken at length about TM Forum’s, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s,” report so far this week. We’ve also spoken about the feeling that the OSS/BSS RFP (Request For Proposal) still has relevance in some situations… as long as it’s more of a lighter-touch than most. We’ve spoken about […]

A lighter-touch OSS procurement approach (part 2)

Yesterday’s post described the approach to get from 400+ possible OSS/BSS suppliers/products down to a more manageable list without: Having to get into significant discussions with vendors (yet) Gathering all your stakeholders together to prepare a detailed list of requirements We’ll call this “the long list,” which might consist of 5-20 suppliers. We use this […]

A lighter-touch OSS procurement approach (part 1)

You may have noticed that we’ve run a series of posts about OSS/BSS procurement, and about the RFP process by association. One of the first steps in the traditional procurement process is preparing a strategy and detailed set of requirements. As TM Forum’s, “Time to kill the RFP? Reinventing IT procurement for the 2020s,” report describes: […]

OSS that make men feel more masculine and in command

“From watching ESPN, I’d learned about the power of information bombardment. ESPN strafes its viewers with an almost hysterical amount of data and details. Scrolling boxes. Panels. Bars. Graphics. Multi-angle camera perspectives. When exposed to a surfeit of data, men tend to feel more masculine and in command. Do most men bother to decipher these […]

Going to the OSS zoo

“There’s the famous quote that if you want to understand how animals live, you don’t go to the zoo, you go to the jungle. The Future Lab has really pioneered that within Lego, and it hasn’t been a theoretical exercise. It’s been a real design-thinking approach to innovation, which we’ve learned an awful lot from.” […]

OSS Persona 10:10:10 Mapping

We sometimes attack OSS/BSS planning at a quite transactional level. For example, think about the process of gathering detailed requirements at the start of a project. They tend to be detailed and transactional don’t they? This type of requirement gathering is more like the WHAT and HOW rings in Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. Just curious, […]

I’m really excited by a just-finished OSS analysis (part 3)

This is the third part of a series describing a really exciting analysis I’ve just finished. Part 1 described how we can turn simple log files into a Sankey diagram that shows real-life process flows (not just a theoretical diagram drawn by BAs and SMEs), like below: Part 2 described how the logs are broken […]