• The Stages of a Project
• 1. Sponsorship and Leadership
• 2. Defining the Business Objectives and Benefits
• 3. Planning the Project
• 4. Ensuring the Project is a Manageable Size
• 5. Defining the Budget
• 6. Managing the Risk
• 7. Getting the Right Project Manager
• 8. Getting Customer Representation
• 9. Defining Roles and Responsibilities
• 10. Getting the Right Resources
• 11. Monitoring and Reporting Progress
• 12. Communicating Progress
• 13. Consultation and Leadership
• 14. Getting Realistic User Requirements
• 15. Defining Your Approach
• 16. Conducting a Structured Test Plan
• 17. Creating an Implementation Plan
• 18. Conducting a Post Implementation Review
• 19. Realising the Benefits
• 20. Learning the Lessons
• 21. Celebrating Success
• Checklist

What's next?

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Getting Customer Representation

Question 8: Do you have experienced and effective user representation?

Good Practice: An experienced User Representative should be appointed to work in partnership with the Project Manager. The User Representative will lead the User Group and be responsible for all business input to the project. It is very important to keep the whole process user driven and ultimate ownership of the project must rest with the business. You must ensure you have adequate user resource to drive the project. If this is not available, you should stop the project. Follow a 'no surprise' approach with the User Group. This requires regular communication and 'telling it like it is'.

Common Mistakes

• Insufficient resources made available.
• User Representative made available on a part time basis.
• Underestimating the amount of user input required during ALL stages of the project. Business input does not end with the User Requirements Specification. As the project moves into the design, development and user pilot stages, very considerable and on-going business input is required to define requirements at a much lower level of detail and to answer the many questions that arise.