Processes In Business Software Implementation For Analysts
Thursday, February 24th, 2011Why does business software change so often? Because it can. Seriously, it is easier to change programs than almost anything else in an organization, including people and hardware. However, business software implementation can be a tricky business. We are going to take a look at the installation phase of implementation, specifically how it applies to software for workstations.
Planning should be the first step of installation. The plan should specify all of the required installation activities. It should state responsible parties and include a timeline for key activities. Everyone who is involved should participate. Without complete participation there is a greater chance for surprises, including finding out that some critical activity got skipped.
Unless it has already been decided, the installation planning should pick a strategy. The easiest, and riskiest, is to install everything at once. This is sometimes called the big bang. In other cases a phased approach is taken. There are several installs spread out over time. Totally new software is often given a pilot install, which entails only installing on a few workstations. A pilot install can be a form of testing. The plan should specify the approach, and also specify what to do to recover from any problems that might develop with operations assessment.
The new software may require hardware upgrades or even network modifications. Anything from more memory to totally new workstations might be called for. This has to be finished before beginning the software installation.
After all of its preconditions have been met, the software installation should proceed with the following steps. Note that a phased install is actually a number of installs. Thus the following steps will be repeated for each phase.
At some point the workstations to receive the install must be identified. This may be done in the planning phase. However, for larger organizations with hundreds or thousands of workstations, it makes more sense to do this as late as possible due to constant changes in the workstation population. For a phased install, each phase will need its own list of workstations. Larger organizations will hopefully have an automated process for doing this.
Pushing the changes to the workstations comes next. Unless this creates a network overload it can be done anytime, even with the workstation in use. Larger organizations should automate this.
The actual workstation install usually needs to be done when the workstation is not in use. Hopefully it can be done sometime when the department is not operating. If not, then some sort of careful control will be needed. It may be necessary to give the users an extra break while their workstations are updated.
Once the changes have been made, there will usually be some sort of post test or certification. This is usually just done on a few workstations. However, if this is a high risk install, management may determine that all of the changed workstations should be tested.
Those are the major components of business software implementation. It is not always exactly like this. Organizations always have some unique characteristics that must be accommodated. Unless an install is routine and dead simple, there should always be a plan. Not planning is a great way to have problems.
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