"Let me prefix this article by saying that I have been doing a lot of installation planning sessions over the past few weeks.  I am constantly surprised by how often the deployment teams underestimate the complexity of this or any integration project.  They often view this as a pure product installation project and do not discuss the finer points of the integration.  Project success is all about details.  With that said I would like to give you my personal work sheet for deploying a solution.  Many of the projects I do involve test environments so there is extra time in the project plan for cutting over to and from test environments.  Additionally, we slot time for data migration.  The migration of 5 years worth of Sales history takes hours to run, so don't forget you have to add time to get the data into the test and out of the test some way.  I would like to point out 2 features of this approach.  First, orient the client to what they are and are not getting.  Everything is discussed and field mappings are documented BEFORE we install anything.  Secondly, we present to the end user community a 20 minute vision of what the system should be doing for them when we are all done. This practice helps encourage discussion about obstacles and concerns that the management have hidden from us during during the discovery.  You may feel that this approach is too long,  expensive, or resource-intensive.  I will just say that from my experience of doing this about 30 times you will never regret thorough planning.  Someone smart once said, "Vision without action is a dream, action without vision is a nightmare."   Again this is the approach we have found to be successful and hope that it helps set the expectation that success on this kind of project is as much about the planning, people, and methodology as it is about the technology.  Ok.... I am off my soap box now.   

 

Pre-Work  By Customer / Partner

1.     Complete the table/relationship section of the Integration Requirements Survey.

2.     Complete the majority of the Infuse Field Survey.

3.     Review Testing Protocol Document – Add customer specific processes to test.

4.     Determine what the environment will be and make sure the resources are available and that the setup is complete.

Visit with Customer to Review the Pre-Work and give overview of solution, get orientation on company and discovery.

Week 1 – Configure Infuse remotely

Week 2 Testing – Repeat as needed

Go Live

Go live week time will depend on how much data there is to migrate.