3 Tips for a Successful Project Implementation
Follow these 3 practices to successfully implement your project.
Large systems deployments that take many hours overnight are still the norm. They can be painful and plagued with issues that require team members to do root cause analysis in the middle of the night.
Worst-case scenario, the implementation had to be backed out. Morale drops and the team need to go back and figure out the problem and try again.
Three tips to help improve the success of the implementation.
Dry run
One of the challenges with big systems implementation is making sure all tasks are covered and that the right version of files and code is being deployed. Systems complexity is what drives this challenge.
In the week before the implementation, bring the team who are doing the implementation together. In some organizations, it’s the production support team or operations team that does the deployments. Walk through each step of the implementation plan with the team. Make sure they know and understand what is happening and what they are doing.
Once that is done, conduct a dry run of the implementation plan. This is where you deploy from one test environment to another using the steps in the implementation plan. You test the timing to make sure it’s accurate and there is enough time for the activity. Use this opportunity to identify any redundant steps, any missing activities and adjust the existing plan.
Risk workshop
The next action that can help your team in implementation is running a risk workshop. Bringing the team together to identify what can go wrong and how to mitigate them. Use the implementation plan as a point of reference.
For each step ask:
- What can go wrong?
- What happens if that didn’t work?
- What can we do to mitigate this?
- Who do we need to mitigate this?
- Is this an action we can do before or during the implementation?
Stakeholder engagement
Engagement of stakeholders in the business. These are the teams who will use the process and benefit from the release. We need to make sure that they have the resources and capability to use the feature from the release. Keep them engaged throughout the project delivery, make sure they have buy-in into the changes, have got the resources to utilize the changes like documented procedures, and have had training prior to the implementation.
Post implementation, keep them in the loop with checkpoints. This is an opportunity for the users to provide feedback and inform the project of any performance issues.
Successful Implementation
These three practices can save you and your team a lot of pain in overnight weekend deployments. They’re simple and effective. The team might not appreciate the effort to do these but they will when things go wrong and they’re prepared.
