Managing changes in a complex world

The telecommunications industry is characterised by enormous complexity and rapid change. In this environment, competitive advantage goes to companies that can plan and manage changes to their operations and infrastructure most effectively. BT has developed an in-house system called TRIADS (Telecoms Requirements, Impact Analysis and Decision Support) to address this need. The primary role of TRIADS is to facilitate high-level design and migration planning for BT´s operational support systems (OSS) infrastructure. The scale and complexity of this infrastructure, consisting of more than a thousand interconnected computer systems, provides a considerable challenge for the planner. In planning a change he must consider not only the effects on other systems, but also the impact on supported products and services, business processes and corporate data usage. Furthermore, it essential that each planner understands the context of his proposals in relation to other planned changes to the infrastructure. TRIADS addresses these needs by modelling all the relevant business dimensions and providing a powerful front-end application to view and edit the model from multiple, customised viewpoints. It incorporates a sophisticated data management scheme which enables data to be dynamically maintained on-line and facilitates group-working across different sectors of the business. The application adds significant value to the data by providing a range of facilities for navigation, information processing and impact analysis, together with electronic tool support for the migration planning process