Prepare to Successfully Deploy PPM Software
Set the stage for sustainable long-term adoption of your new PPM suite through preparation and communication.
- PPM suite deployments are complicated and challenging. Vendors and consultants can provide much needed expertise and assistance to organizations deploying new PPM suites.
- While functional requirements are often defined during the procurement stage (for example, in an RFP), the level of detail during this stage is likely insufficient for actually configuring the solution to your specific PPM needs. Too many organizations fail to further develop these functional requirements between signing their contracts and the official start of their professional implementation engagement.
- Many organizations fail to organize and record the PPM data they will need to populate the new PPM suite. In almost all cases, customers have the expertise and are in the best position to collect and organize their own data. Leaving this until the vendor or consultant arrives to help with the deployment can result in using your professional services in a suboptimal way.
- Vendors and consultants want you to prepare for their implementation engagements so that you can make the best use of their expertise and assistance. They want you to deploy a PPM suite that can be sustainably adopted in the long term. All too often, however, they arrive onsite to find customers that are disorganized and underprepared.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Preparing for a professional implementation engagement allows you to make the best use of your professional services, as well as helping to ensure that the PPM suite is deployed according to your specific PPM needs.
- Involving your internal resources in the preparation of data and in fully defining functional requirements for the PPM suite helps to establish stakeholder buy-in early on, helping to build internal ownership of the solution from the beginning. This avoids the solution being perceived as something the vendor/consultant “forced upon us.”
- Vendors and consultants are happy when organizations are organized and prepared for their professional implementation engagements. Preparation ensures these engagements are positive experiences for everyone involved.
Impact and Result
- Ensure that the data necessary to deploy the new PPM suite is recorded and organized.
- Make your functional requirements detailed enough to ensure that the new PPM suite can be configured/customized during the deployment engagement in a way that best fits the organization’s actual PPM needs.
- Through carefully preparing data and fully defining functional requirements, you help the solution become sustainably adopted in the long term.
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What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
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Get the help you need in this 4-phase advisory process. You'll receive 10 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Create a preparation team and plan
- Call 1: Create a project team and plan
- Call 2: Review the plan and timeline
Guided Implementation 2: Prepare project-related requirements and deliverables
- Call 1: Determine project-related functional requirements
- Call 2: Determine reporting and dashboard functional requirements
- Call 3: Finalize the project-related requirements and data
Guided Implementation 3: Prepare PPM resource requirements and deliverables
- Call 1: Collect PPM resource data and functional requirements
- Call 2: Define transition and training functional requirements
- Call 3: Finalize the resource-related deliverable
Guided Implementation 4: Provide preparation materials to the vendor and implementation professionals
- Call 1: Present your preparation deliverables to your vendor and/or consultants
- Call 2: Review, assess, and respond to proposed changes to your functional requirements
Contributors
- Jeff Berkel, VP Professional Services, Project Insight
- Angela Bunner, PMP, Senior Director, Clarizen
- Patty Bush, Director of Enterprise Applications, Des Moines University
- Ross Eagar, Associate Director, Project Sourcing & Fulfilment Office, ArcBest Technologies
- Marion Fina, Consultant, Planisware
- Richard Higgins, Senior Implementation Consultant, Upland Software
- Alex Gorman, Director of Professional Services, Clarizen
- Jon Karnofsky, Application Architect, Atlantic Business Technologies (ABT)
- Steve Mintz, Owner, CLM Perspectives
- Courtney Snipes, PMP, Services Director, Innotas
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