Sam Ceccola, Vice-Chair of the Supplier Council and Ben Calloni,
Chair of the Customer Council explained the new pro-active approach
that both of these Members Councils intend to follow, to add value to
membership across all Open Group Forums and Working Groups. Their
proposed action plan was supported by representatives from the Forums
and Working Groups.
The Councils exist to amplify and multiply the benefits of Open Group active
participation to and for member organizations. You can't benefit from something if
you don't know about it. The Councils provide the best channels for
sharing information, not only "horizontally" across Forums and
Working Groups, but also "vertically" between the
Forums/Working Groups and the
Governing Board, as well as with the Open Group staff who attend
conferences to facilitate membership activities and business
development.
The Open Group uniquely offers the best of two kinds of
collaboration:
- Forums and Working Groups each work towards their own particular goals and
objectives.
- The Open Group themes thread across and through all of these efforts. Current
themes include the "practice" of architecture, certification programs for
professionals, certification and testing programs for software, and of
course Boundaryless Information Flow™.
The reality is that it takes some effort to recognize how the threads of specific work efforts dovetail with each
other and with the overriding themes. Council activities help members to
take a step back to view "the whole" so as to produce better coordination
and sharing between members in all Forums/Working Groups, and as we all appreciate,
we each get added value through sharing.
The proposal is that the Councils will add value to Forum and Working
Group members
by facilitating them producing a roadmap which includes their planned
deliverables and projected timelines, and from these roadmaps:
- Provide oversight for all members on visibility of what is
happening in each Forum/Working Group
- Identify where and how the work in each Forum/Working Group aligns with The
Open Group's strategic direction
- Identify where work in two or more Forums/Working Groups has synergy so will
benefit from joint-Forum/Working Group working to leverage shared experience
and expertise across the membership
Roadmaps are only snapshots in time unless they are used as working
documents and which are updated when significant events occur. The
Councils will provide a platform at each conference for each
Forum/Working Group
representative to report on their roadmap, and from these reports
thereby enable other Forums/Working Group representatives to identify synergies,
overlaps, and complementary activities which enrich project goals across
the whole membership.
The Councils leaders will provide a Roadmap template by end-August,
which they will recommend all Forum/Working Group representatives to use as a
common format to facilitate information-sharing.
Forum/Working Group representatives are requested to provide draft Roadmaps
using this Councils template, in time for presentation in a Councils
Meeting in Budapest (October 22-26).
The Councils leaders will aim to provide a "collaboration"
tool which will facilitate sharing of information between all
Forum/Working Group
representatives, Councils leaders, the Governing Board, and The Open
Group staff.
In closing Q&A, it was confirmed that the Councils are ready to
respond to requests from any member to start a new activity in The Open
Group. All that is needed is for that member to contact the Secretary to
the Councils - i.dobson@opengroup.org
- or any Councils leader with their request, and it will be followed
through.
