Test environments for BSS/OSS transformation

A BSS/OSS transformation is tested against a copy of the operator: CRM, CPQ, billing, order provisioning, ITSM and the network, wired together the way production is. Those environments are as complex as the systems they mirror, and a programme can only move as fast as they can be built, refreshed and kept coherent.

As Global Test Environment Manager at Telia Norway from 2012 to 2014, that was the job: the environments the transformation projects depended on.

Provide test environments that behaved like production across six system domains, kept their data current, and could be configured and refreshed at the pace of several transformation projects at once.

• CRM, CPQ, billing, order provisioning, ITSM and network environments that had to be coordinated as one.
• Network zoning and load balancing that had to match production for the tests to mean anything.
• Data refresh processes that kept environments realistic without leaking or corrupting production data.
• Multiple projects competing for the same environments.

The environments were managed as a product in their own right: a defined configuration for each, explicit network zoning and load balancing that mirrored production, and repeatable data refresh processes — so that a project could ask for an environment in a known state rather than inherit whatever the last project had left.

Built and managed the test environments supporting the BSS/OSS transformation projects: coordinating the CRM, CPQ, billing, order provisioning, ITSM and network environments, and managing environment configuration, network zoning, load balancing and data refresh.

Test environments moved from being a bottleneck each project worked around to a managed capability the programmes could plan against. It was also the ground floor of the BSS/OSS work that followed: understanding how CRM, CPQ, billing, provisioning and the network fit together, by wiring them up.

Test environments across CRM, CPQ, billing, order provisioning, ITSM and network, built and managed for the transformation projects of the period. Throughput and defect figures are not published here.

• Treat environments as a product with a defined state, an owner and a refresh cadence.
• The integration points between CRM, CPQ, billing and provisioning are where transformations fail; make the environments exercise them.
• Whoever manages the environments ends up understanding the whole stack — use that.