As the business grows, you will probably find more uses of technology to improve production (and hopefully, profits). Deciding to boost your technology atmosphere to have your company objectives is really a necessary milestone, but it’s essential to recognize the scope and budget of the project before jumping into implementation.
This short article explains a phased approach that may help you increase your budget and supply the finest results when thinking about a technology enhancement.
Phase I – Business Need
This early on is made to assist you to determine for those who have clarified the “why” questions as it requires your objectives. You will be able to clearly find out the business benefit (roi) for the potential project after finishing this phase. Listed here are the steps which will show you through this phase:
1. What’s the problem/deficiency that requires neglect the in money and time to become solved?
2. Does your company challenge absolutely require new or enhanced technology?
a. Do the employees require additional training with existing systems?
b. Can the task be solved by altering the workflow or business practices?
3. Once the issue is clearly defined and also the solution suggests technology enhancements, an initial budget can be discovered.
Phase II – Budget & Scope
In Phase I we qualified our potential solution inside the arena of technology so we have to define the scope from the solution. Without defining scope, you’ll risk any project growing unmanageable both in money and time. This is actually the phase best places to take the time to obviously document the company needs or “what” is going to be implemented.
1. Bring all of the necessary players together to go over the objectives from the project.
2. Figure out how the issue which was identified in Phase I affects all key players.
3. Discuss the way the issue will be solved with technology and become specific as it requires your present business practices and workflows.
4. Document your findings and discussions.
5. When the solution continues to be identified, you are able to present your documents for your preferred vendor(s) and acquire proposals or quotes.
Phase III Pilot
Applying any technology project can be tough for the reason that technology itself changes so rapidly as well as your employees might have different expectations using the solution. An airplane pilot phase is extremely effective to “test” the answer and ensure all expectations are met.
1. When your vendor continues to be identified, you are able to request an airplane pilot or trial solution be placed into position for limited use to check results.
2. Following the pilot option would be implemented, make sure to appraise the effectiveness and verify the problems in phase I are now being solved.
Phase IV – Implementation
So now you must confirmed the pilot is solving some or all of the problems identified in phase I, now you are prepared to rollout the entire solution. It is crucial to carefully manage your vendor and make certain they’re delivering the things they guaranteed inside their proposal.
1. Produce a project plan that includes key milestones for that implementation of the solution.
An example plan’s proven below:
* Project Kick-off
* Budget review
* Set timelines for all project
* Determine training needs
* Technology install/enhancement
* Document the alterations inside your existing workflow
* Produce a forum for workers to supply feedback in this process
* Create a suite of tests that verifies the recently installed technology doesn’t break any existing processes.
* Create a suite of tests that verifies the recently installed technology satisfy the expectation from the suggested solution.
* Insure your timelines are now being met and finances are not growing.
* Implementation complete
* Begin training
2. Following the solution continues to be installed, consolidate all of the documents and training materials in a single repository for convenient reference.
Phase V – Project Review & Closure
Since we’ve got the technology solution continues to be effectively implemented and everybody continues to be trained, you will have to setup measures to make sure that the answer works well.
1. Create an anonymous survey for workers to supply feedback.
a. Survey questions will include: overall project success, training materials and responsibility impact.
2. Develop metrics that may appraise the profit and/or efficiency which was achieved because of this project. This should help you find out the true roi.
3. Still refine training.
This phased method for building a technology project is supposed to be considered a guide. There are lots of details within each phase that might be too extended to explain here. There’s also many books that can help with effectively managing any kind of project, not just technology. This is a website that’s a great reference for project management software.
