RESULTS:
We kicked off the project on December 2nd, and during the first week developed (and finalized) the Project Charter & Execution Plan, detailed Project Schedule, Risk Mitigation Plan, Communications Plan, and the Business Process Design (BPD) Methodology document. We also drafted the Education and Training, Software Configuration Management, and Quality Assurance Plans during that first week. We were able to get so many documents finalized in that limited time frame by using iStrat templates. In each case the finished documents were complete, without any of the fluff but with all of the detail that we needed to drive the project from that point forward.

In all, we generated somewhere in the range of 225 – 250 pages of documentation, plus an MS-Project based schedule. The Schedule contained just over 200 line items, and including all tasks, milestones, resources, durations, dependencies, and deliverables.

While we were developing and finalizing the documentation, we were also setting the stage for starting the Pre-BPD Sessions at the site the following Monday – we stayed out there over that first weekend and made certain that the facilities were ready on Monday. We ran two parallel sessions, one for Work, Tag Out, and Labor Entry & Reporting, and a second session for the whole of the Supply Chain processes, rotating facilitators and subject matter experts as needed based on the material being covered. We were able to keep the groups small, and we wrapped up the design sessions after two weeks (12/9 and 12/16). Over the ensuing two weeks (Christmas break), we drafted the Business Requirements Design documents, and revised the draft plans from the first week.

In the BP Requirements document, we detailed the existing configuration, identified and documented minor changes we needed to make to preferences and code values, identified scope, source, location, quality and format of the legacy data. We also identified and documented test cases, reports they needed, defined process metrics, and included a training matrix (identified what classifications needed what training components). The draft document was reviewed, updated and finalized the first week of January, and from that point forward we used the BR document to drive everything.

Also, in parallel with the BR documentation piece, we had a team of systems engineers installing the couple of additional regions we needed, and getting connectivity established between the production and training environments and the individual workstations around the facilities. During this period, we also conducted a series of Road Shows to sell end users on the solution.

For the data conversion, we used templates to perform the mapping, and we used existing, customer licensed data load programs to load data initially. The one increase of scope that we ran into involved a different print configuration than what the baseline Tag Print function uses.

On the quality assurance side of things, we used templates initially, modified to align with the process flows in the BP Document. We used our repository of over 1500 process based test scripts as a starting point, and from there we were able to get the test scripts and data together and system ready pretty quickly. Given the way these scripts were developed, they fit the processes without much adjustment, and they’re modular nature supports stringing them together to test end to end business processes. From there, we conducted data validation and verification testing, unit and systems testing (we combined these on this particular project), integration testing, and end user acceptance testing. Too, we used the process flows to develop the training material, and had end users review the Systems Basics WBT (which this customer owns) prior to the training.

All end users were trained in the four to five weeks leading up to the cut-over. The transition to production was smooth, and the end users have been using the tool effectively ever since.