Hi EduardoK
Mike has separately provided some information on this so I won't cover the same ground. I just want to provide some advice if you decide to go down the decomposition path in your company.
The current eTOM is both technically and organizationally neutral in its current level of definition. This has been done deliberately for two reasons -
- Firstly, technologies and organizations come and go continuously, but the operational activity that needs to support both has longevity independent of the organization that uses the activities from time to time, and the technology (at the level of abstraction in which eTOM is currently defined) to which it is applied from an operational management perspective.
- Secondly, every organization operates their end-end process flows based on their local circumstances so a neutral description of the steps that make up process flows was all that could be agreed anyway.
The argument beyond what has been defined so far is to whether to maintain neutrality or to customize to meet local circumstances. There is also a discussion about whether there is a natural "bottom" to the eTOM framework.
My strong advice is that if you desire to use the eTOM as a definitive reference framework then neutrality to organization and technology should be maintained at all levels of decomposition. The first dot point above will continue to apply.
This raises the immediate response (usually?) something along the lines that one technology is very different to another and that the management steps (say for configuration) are different between technologies so how can neutrality be maintained. My answer to this is - what is being managed by the process!
Using the configuration example, my view is that process flows are defined and a step in the process flow (at a lower level of decomposition than Level 3) might be "Configure Equipment" or "Configure Network Element". In my view the operational process is more interested in managing the work being undertaken, and wanting to know that the work has been done. If this is the case, then from a process management perspective it doesn't matter whether a person assigned the task opens a detailed manual and follows the vendor procedures, or some automated tool which has the procedural logic inbuilt loads the configuration details.
Taking this approach, the eTOM can remain neutral, it will have a natural lower level where decomposition stops (usually Level 5 or Level 6), and the framework will have longevity beyond chnages in organizationa nd technology. Thus management systems to support management processes will also have longevity.
Regards
gregf