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 health of my network (within expected tolerances if necessary) So that Customer service quality is kept to an optimal level with little or no human intervention

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure the overall solution is designed with machine-led automations as a guiding principle So that Human intervention can not be easily engineered into the systems/processes

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Automatically identify any failures of resources or services within the entire network So that All relevant data can be collected, logged, codified and earmarked for effective remedial action without human interaction

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Automatically identify any degradation of resource or service performance within the network So that All relevant data can be collected, logged, codified and earmarked for effective remedial action without human interaction

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Map each codified data set (for failure or degradation cases) to a remedial action plan So that Remedial activities can be initiated without human interaction

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Identify which remedial activities can be initiated via a programmatic interface and which activities require manual involvement such as a truck roll So that Even manual activities can be automatically initiated

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that automations are able to resolve all known failure / degradation scenarios So that Activities can be initiated for any failure or degradation and be automatically resolved through to closure (with little or no human intervention)

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure there is sufficient network resilience So that Any failure or degradation can be automatically bypassed (temporarily or permanently)

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure there is sufficient resilience within all support systems So that Any failure or degradation can be automatically bypassed (temporarily or permanently) to ensure customer service is maintained

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that operator initiated changes (eg planned maintenance, software upgrades, etc) automatically generate change tracking, documentation and logging So that The change can be monitored (by systems and humans where necessary) to ensure there is minimal or no impact to customer services, but also to ensure resolution data is consistently recorded

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that customer initiated changes (eg by raising an incident) automatically generate change tracking, documentation and logging So that The change can be monitored (by systems and humans where necessary) to ensure the incident is closed expediently, but also to ensure resolution data is consistently recorded

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Initiate planned outages with or without triggering automated remedial activities So that The change agents can decide to use automations or not and ensure automations don’t adversely effect the activities that are scheduled for the planned outage window

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that if an unplanned outage does occur, impacted customers are automatically notified (on first instance and via a communications sequence if necessary throughout the outage window) So that Customer experience can be managed as best possible

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that if an unplanned outage does occur without a remedial action being triggered, a post-mortem analysis is initiated So that Automations can be revised to cope with this previously unhandled outage scenario

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that even previously un-seen new fail scenarios can be handled by remedial automations So that Customer service quality is kept to an optimal level with little or no human intervention

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Automatically monitor the effects of remedial actions So that Remedial automations don’t trigger race conditions that result in further degradation and/or downstream impacts

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Be able to manually override any automations by following a documented sequence of events So that If a race condition is inadvertently triggered by an automation, it can be negated quickly and effectively before causing further degradation

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Intentionally trigger network/service outages and/or degradations, including cascaded scenarios on an scheduled and/or randomised basis So that The resilience of the network and systems can be thoroughly tested (and improved if necessary)

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Intentionally trigger network/service outages and/or degradations, including cascaded scenarios on an ad-hoc basis So that The resilience of the network and systems can be thoroughly tested (and improved if necessary)

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Perform scheduled compliance checks on the network So that Expected configurations and policies are in place across the network

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Automatically generate scheduled reports relating to the effectiveness of the network, services and automations So that The overall solution health (including automations) can be monitored

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Automatically generate dashboards (in near-real-time) relating to the effectiveness of the network, services and automations So that The overall solution health (including automations) can be monitored

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that automations are able to extend across all domains within the solution So that Remedial actions aren’t constrained by system hand-offs

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure configuration backups are performed automatically on all relevant systems (eg EMS, OSS, etc) So that A recent good solution configuration can be stored as protection in case automations fail and corrupt configurations within the system

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure configuration restores are performed and tested automatically on all relevant systems (eg EMS, OSS, etc) So that A recent good solution configuration can be reverted to in case automations fail and corrupt configurations within the system

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure automations are able to manage the entire service lifecycle (add, modify/upgrade, suspend, restore, delete) So that Customer services can evolve to meet client expectations with little or no human intervention

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Have a design and architecture that uses intent-based and/or policy-based actions So that The complexity of automations is minimised (eg automations don’t need to consider custom rules for different device makes/models, etc)

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure as many components of the solution (eg EMS, OSS, customer portals, etc) have programmatic interfaces (even if manual activities are required in back-end processes) So that Automations can initiate remedial actions in near real time

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure all components and data flows within the solution are securely hardened (eg encryption of data in motion and at rest) So that The power of the autonomous platform can not be leveraged for nefarious purposes

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that all required metrics can be automatically sourced from the network / systems in as near real time as feasible / useful So that Automations have the full set of data they need to initiate remedial actions and it is as up-to-date as possible for precise decision-making

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Use the power of learning machines So that The sophistication and speed of remedial response is faster, more accurate and more reliable than if manual interaction were used

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Record actual event patterns and replay scenarios offline So that Event clusters and response patterns can be thoroughly tested as part of the certification process prior to being released into production environments

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Capture metrics that can be cross-referenced against event patterns and remedial actions So that Regressions and/or refinements can improve existing automations (ie continuous retraining of the model)

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Be able to seed a knowledge base with relevant event/action data, whether the pattern source is from Production, an offline environment, a digital twin environment or other production-like environments So that The database is able to identify real scenarios, even if scenarios are intentially initiated, but could potentially cause network degradation to a production environment

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Ensure that programmatic interfaces also allow for revert / rollback capabilities So that Remedial actions that aren’t beneficial can be rolled back to the previous state; OR other remedial actions are performed, allowing the automation to revert to original configuration / state

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Be able to initiate circuit breakers to override any automations So that If a race condition is inadvertently triggered by an automation, it can be negated quickly and effectively before causing further degradation

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Manually or automatically generate response-plans (ie documented sequences of activities) for any remedial actions fed back into the system So that Internal (eg quality control) or external (eg regulatory) bodies can review “best-practice” remedial activities at any point in time

As a Head of Network Operations, I want to Intentionally trigger catastrophic network failures (in non-prod environments) So that We can trial many remedial actions until we find an optimal solution to seed the knowledge base with

November 20, 2019
Ryan

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