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:

• My point of view counts –I have been supporting CSP clients in a variety of roles for most of my career. I have accrued a lot of experience and knowledge in this domain but had never really given much thought to giving back at an industry level outside of IBM. I took a risk, put my hand up and was rewarded with positive feedback from those who are, by definition, thought leaders in this industry. My contributions matter.
• This is not my day job – IBM is a proactive supporter of TM Forum and encourages practitioners to contribute where appropriate; however, such work must be done outside of billable hours. My transformation to contributor was motivated in a large part due to the COVID pandemic pausing my recreational activities. With time on my hands I decided to turn my attention to giving back to the industry community that has had such a large and positive influence on the design and architecture work I do on a daily basis. There were a few evenings and weekends devoted to authoring and reviewing documents, but the payoff was worth it.
• I learn as much as I contribute – participating in the TM Forum ODA Transformation Project gives me an opportunity to interact with and learn from industry experts that I might otherwise not meet through my client engagements. It is refreshing to share experiences and insights outside the context of a specific project. The challenge is in finding timeslots that work for most project contributors because the team truly spans the globe!
• It’s cool having your name on a TM Forum publication – as an Architect in IBM Consulting, I am encouraged to develop and demonstrate industry eminence to achieve certain career milestones. TM Forum is a well-respected organization and a natural fit for my interests and skills. I have been reading and referencing TM Forum publications for many years and now it’s cool to have a handful of them cite me as 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.