Sections you should include in your project / implementation plan
1. Definition of objective / Establish Sponsors
Definition of Problems to solve
Identify executive sponsors and supporters
2. Requirements gathering
3. Vendor selection & trial
Sign MNDAs
Notes: Using the best in class or industry standard should be the default. Deviate from this guidance only if the cost is prohibitive or there is a must have, deal breaker feature that the best in class does not have (which is really unlikely because they are the best in class…)
Avoid trialing more than two tools, trials are extremely time consuming. Be comfortable eliminating tools based on peoples’ prior experience with them.
Get ballpark pricing from the vendors before the trial. You do not want to trial a tool that is out of your price range.
4. Purchase tool
Security review
Legal review
5. Migration & Integration
Includes testing and validation
Includes data warehouse and reporting changes
Includes import of data from legacy application
6. Legacy application shutdown
7. Training
There may be two pieces here:
- Educating on the business objective and the proposed process to reach it (again, the objective is not to get a new tool. The objective is to do something).
- Training on the new tool.