Planning - Delivery - Management

Project Planning will work for you.

Often project planning is ignored in favour of getting the work done. However, many people fail to realise the long-term value of an implementation plan in saving them time, money and overcoming problems.

Planning involves a structured approach describing how, when and by whom, a specific target or set of targets is to be achieved. Plans are the backbone required for any project.

Analyse:

When analysing the project requirements, it is essential to determine what is required from a functional, technical, operation and strategic perspective.

The degree of preparation for the project should be understood in terms of infrastructure, environment, data, staffing and processes.

Design:

The design phase translates functional requirements into project specifications by building accurate data and process models, developing standards and report structures for the project and implementation plan, setting a training plan and organising those all-important acceptance criteria against which success will eventually be measured.

Develop:

When development is required, there are clearly defined stages in terms of build, testing and documentation. These three components stand irrespective of the development technique that the software team adopts.

All are important if the quality is to be of the appropriate standard, the solution is to work as intended and the solution may be serviced, further developed and enhanced effectively during its operational life.

Deploy:

When deployment of the solution occurs, there will be configuration requirements to manage the migration from a legacy system and to import the legacy data. This can be managed effectively and supported alongside a whole range of training.

The quality of the data you use has vast impact on the ultimate success of the system. For your system to be effective, you should ensure that the training is not just about the users, but the training of your own experts and system administrators to establish your solutions knowledge base.

Pilot:

If your project is a large or strategically important project, the advantages of a pilot phase easily outweigh the cost of the pilot and can go far towards ensuring a successful larger scale rollout.

During the pilot phase, you can ensure that the benefits are demonstrated to the stakeholders, with a low risk to the organisation.

The solution can then be fine-tuned and the criteria for a successful rollout established.

Support:

The final phase of your project is the Management phase and ongoing operation and support of the solution. It is during this phase that ongoing training and staff development, technical enhancements and upgrades are undertaken. It is also the appropriate phase to assess and re-assess the future requirements to establish where the solution can further enhance your business practices, fully benefiting your clients and customers.

Assess:

As with any area of operations in your organisation, you will constantly be assessing solutions to ensure they deliver value for money. We all know that business drivers' change and an organisation must be prepared to respond differently to its customers. This means that your solution must adapt.

Therefore, no solution should be set in a 'straight jacket', as it should allow opportunities to be exploited and costs to be managed.

When a merger or acquisition occurs for example, this provides a major opportunity to review and assess the solutions performance and contribution to the business.

For further information about the Planning, Delivery and Management process please telephone us on 0118 977 8560 or email info@mass-services.com.