The Foundations of Autonomic Management research programme addresses the current inability of service providers and communications operators to adapt, in a dynamic fashion, their offered services to the changing needs of their customers. It aims to develop a reference architectural framework for autonomic communications, which will facilitate the definition, creation, deployment and management of communications services in line with high level business goals, but without the requirement for significant human intervention. The framework will include a new methodology for managing the lifecycle of managed entities found in telecommunications systems, applying UML-based modelling of the static/dynamic characteristics and behaviour of the system. This behaviour will then be controlled using a holistic combination of policy management and process automation. Prototypes of autonomic services and resources developed during the course of the programme will be deployed and validated on a 3G and beyond test bed.