When selecting new applications for an OSS or to augment an existing OSS, it always makes sense to me to run a Proof of Concept. But what do we want to demonstrate in that PoC? For me, we want to run demonstrations of the factors (eg features, use-cases, processes, etc) that justify the investment.
A simple exercise you can use is to identify the personas / roles that interact with the OSS. This could include personas such as NOC operator, strategic planner, network engineer, order entry, field ops, data / analytics, application administrator, etc. The actual personas will differ within each organisation of course.
For each of those personas, we can identify and interview an individual that represents that persona.
Interview questions include:
- What are the key responsibilities of your role
- What is the most important goal / KPI for your role
- How does this OSS (or proposed OSS) support you meeting this goal
- Describe the single most important process / function that you perform using the OSS
- Why is it so important
- How often do you perform this process / function
- Please provide a short list of other important processes / functions you perform with this OSS
We can then build this into a matrix and seek to prioritise into a set of use-cases. Based on time and cost constraints, we can then build the top-n of those use-cases into implementation scenarios for the PoC.