Contributed Content
IBM Consulting architect and TM Forum member Greg Herringer explains why it's good to contribute to our topics and projects and foster greater collaboration.
Lessons learned in my journey from TM Forum lurker to contributor
I freely admit it, I am a long-time TM Forum lurker. I’ve been monitoring community posts since the mid 2000s while devouring the Guide Books that touch on areas that interest me. I had the privilege of working with a telco architect that contributed to the very early days of TM Forum. I learned a lot. I shared what I learned with my clients and colleagues.
But I was wanting more.
As a member-led organization, TM Forum directs its energy based on member interests, mostly in elaborating on best practices for the present and setting direction for the future. The broad scope of this mandate results in some domains with extremely rich content and others with less detail. Basically, if it’s a hot topic, it gets worked on. The TM Forum Open API project is an example of this.
While lurking I noticed a common theme emerging in the community posts: members seeking practical guidance to address specific catalogue modeling issues not directly addressed by the abstract concepts of the Information Framework (aka SID). I had been tackling similar issues for my clients and had developed a point of view in this area that one or two responses to community posts could not adequately cover. But how best to share this point of view, and would anyone care?
It was time to do more than lurk.
I signed up for the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) Transformation Project as its mission best fit my interests and the guidance I wanted to share. To my surprise, within this project was a backlog of topics collected from the community posts under the theme “modelling topics that require elaboration”. Reading this list, I realized that my guidance highly aligned with these topics. Being bold, I added a comment to this list with a proposal outlining solutions for these modelling problems.
Then things started to happen.
The ODA Transformation Project lead reached out and invited me to discuss my proposal at the weekly team call. Cool! I was paired up with another team member to document best practices for modelling CPE. A few weeks later we presented a draft Implementation Guide for team review and approval. After incorporating some great feedback, the project published IG1236 Best Practice CPE Modelling for Quotation, Ordering, Delivery and Support.
Oh my, what have I started?
Practitioners in the telco industry reached out to thank me for my contributions and ask questions about the content because they were really interested. I was being appreciated for stepping up and sharing thought leadership with the TM Forum community. Apparently my point of view resonated with practitioners challenged to make practical design decisions. This motivated me to contribute to a variety of other Implementation Guides as a reviewer or co-author. This allowed me to share and debate ideas with other experienced contributors from across the globe – a great learning experience that helped me better support my clients.
What lessons did I learn?
TM Forum thrives on member engagement and contributions. Here is what I learned in my transformation from lurker to contributor:
Have I motivated you to contribute?
TM Forum is developing a Transformation Project Framework (TPF) to complement the great thinking behind Open Digital Architecture (ODA). Whereas ODA provides guidance on the architecture and processes of a modern CSP, the TPF’s goal is to provide guidance on how to evolve to the ODA model. Building out the TPF requires contributions and thought leadership from TM Forum members, especially from practitioners with project and program management experience.
I hope this brief peek into my TM Forum contribution journey will motivate you to step up and contribute as I have done. I look forward to collaborating with you.