Understanding the Methodical Principles

Abstract

Understanding the methodical principles is indispensable for the successful adaptation of organization, processes, data, and applications to the changed industry conditions. In most cases, those adjustments are related to the various different parts of a telecommunications operator. The planning, design, and realization of those changes are a complex endeavor which, in most situations, takes several years, involves huge project teams, and impacts major parts of the enterprise. Without clear structures and guidelines, the risk of inconsistent and singular solutions is high. The overriding challenge is to understand the interrelations between the different enterprise parts and take decisions that are beneficial from the overall enterprise perspective. The general methodical foundation of the solution design is related to information systems modeling. In this context, information systems are a complex construct comprised of employees, their organizational responsibilities, their activities that create the enterprise's outcome, as well as applications that support and automate activities. Enterprise architectures provide a general structure to plan, design, and implement those complex solutions. Content-wise, reference models are used as recommendations. In the telecommunications industry, the TM Forum offers well-accepted reference models for processes, data, and applications. From the dynamic perspective, concepts of enterprise architecture management and enterprise transformation support the planning and implementation. In this chapter, a general introduction to information systems modeling (cf. Sect. 3.1), a description of enterprise architecture approaches (cf. Sect. 3.2), reference modeling (cf. Sect. 3.3), relevant reference models for the telecommunications industry (cf. Sect. 3.4), and enterprise transformation (cf. Sect. 3.5) are presented.