Template Areas


Area: Planning

There are a number of critical decisions to make at the start:

  • How will the software be deployed or rolled out?

  • Do you opt for one package or several packages from different vendors?

  • How will you motivate the employees to support this?

There are a number of approaches for rollout. One way is to deploy the whole system in one country. Another approach is to deploy one part of the system in every country. A third approach is to implement different parts of the system in different locations. The first two are the most popular with the first being the most common.

For packages the trend has been to rely on one vendor. The argument is that you are guaranteed of interfaces that work. You have a simpler management relationship in which you can apply pressure on them due to the size of the order. And it is sometimes simpler.

Area: Software And Consultant Acquisition

General consulting guidelines were presented in Chapter 8. Here we point out that there are a variety of different types of consultants that may be needed for the project. For one package there are actually nine different types of consultants. The basic guideline is to define the outside support that you need when you select the software. Otherwise, you could have selected the software and find that there are few consultants available—making your software decision look pretty bad.

Area: Software Implementation

Here the main guideline follows from Chapters 2 and 5 in terms of how you organize the project. You do not want to organize it by country. In software installation what you learn in one place can be extremely valuable in another country. To facilitate and promote collaboration, set up the project across countries.

Area: Data Conversion

Data conversion has been a curse for many for years. Data in older systems is often of poor or uneven quality. There may be a lack of completeness and consistency. There may be problems in the timing as to when the data was captured. The problem grows in complexity when there are multiple systems.

The problems get worse when you consider what the new system requires. There are often many new fields of data. But where will this data come from if it is not in the current systems? Will it all have to be entered manually? Will you add the data as you go? Another problem is that a data element may have the same name in both the old and new systems, but have very different meanings. The lesson learned is to pay attention to data conversion early and to create a separate subproject for this area.

Area: Interfaces

Interfaces were mentioned earlier in this chapter. This is another subproject. The topics that have to be included in the plan include:

  • Timing of the interface;

  • Frequency of the interface;

  • How validation of the interface will be accomplished;

  • Recovery and restart if the interface fails;

  • Documentation of the interface;

  • Roll back if the data is passed, but later is found to be problematic.

Area: Training And Cutover

These subjects sound straightforward. After all, the interfaces, data conversion, and other tasks such as testing were handled. However, you would be amazed at what comes up at the last minute. Some users may raise new exceptions and issues—just to delay the implementation. People may have made assumptions about what business rules were—then they found it changed. Keep tracking issues until the very end.




International Project Management
International Project Management: Leadership in Complex Environments
ISBN: 0470578823
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 154

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