Prepare to Successfully Deploy PPM Software

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.

Prepare to Successfully Deploy PPM Software Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read this Executive Brief to understand why preparing for PPM deployment will ensure that organizations get the most value out of the implementation professional services they purchased and will help drive long-term sustainable adoption of the new PPM suite.

Prepare to Successfully Deploy PPM Software – Executive Brief

1. Create a preparation team and plan

Engage in purposeful and effective PPM deployment planning by clearly defining what to prepare and when exactly it is time to move from planning to execution.

2. Prepare project-related requirements and deliverables

Provide clearer definition to specific project-related functional requirements and collect the appropriate PPM data needed for an effective PPM suite deployment facilitated by vendors/consultants.

3. Prepare PPM resource requirements and deliverables

Provide clearer definition to specific resource management functional requirements and data and create a communication and training plan.

4. Provide preparation materials to the vendor and implementation professionals

Plan how to engage vendors/consultants by communicating functional requirements to them and evaluating changes to those requirements proposed by them.

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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.

Table of Contents

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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

Authors

Matt Burton

Barry Cousins

Trevor Bieber

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