Implementation

Default database approach

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Last Friday, while enjoying a not-at-all healthy Salisbury steak with cheese, I had an interesting discussion with a partner: should NAV consultancies create default databases?

A default database (in this context) is a packaged solution built upon standard Microsoft Dynamics NAV, where a consultancy has introduced a number of features that they sell to all their customers as the standard solution, instead of standard NAV. The modifications to standard NAV can range from simple report adornments to minor feature improvements  to full-scale horizontal or vertical functionalities.

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What’s New In Sure Step: Functional Requirements Document

  • Reading time:4 mins read

One of many improvements the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology has brought along is the revised purpose of the Functional Requirements Document (FRD). This document has long served as cornerstone of every Analysis process of every implementation project: it was the main deliverable of the Analysis phase and it both documented customer’s requirements and explained how they will be met with Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution.

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Featuritis Cure

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Don’t you just love when users come up with new feature ideas at a microprocessor clock rate. Even before you finish developing one, five new requests pop up. This is a disease, and it’s called featuritis!

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The Sure Step Rule of Taxi Fare

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Some time back, as I was riding a taxi from Prague airport to Holiday Inn hotel, I wondered about the fixed price I was about to pay for the ride.

– “Airport to city is 700 flat.” – said the driver when I asked how much approximately will it cost.

Common wisdom goes that flat rates mean you get it worse than if it wasn’t flat. Indeed, if it was on meter, and if the driver took the shortest route (I had a GPS device on me, I could’ve easily checked it!), the fare would’ve been lower. And yet, I decided I loved the flat rate.

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Read My Lips: Why?

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Recently, a reader, commenting on my last post about Sure Step, pointed me to an article by Karl E. Wiegers
“Read My Lips: No New Models!” I initially responded to the comment, but I figure the comments aren’t read as often as posts, so I decided to blog it.

It’s doubly funny that the reader is using Dr. Wiegers to devalue and dismiss Sure Step: firstly, the article has really nothing to do with implementation methodologies at all, and secondly, when I delivered Sure Step training at WinDays pre-conf earlier this year, I gave to each attendant a copy of Karl E. Wiegers’s latest book “Practical Project Initiation”—at the time it was the best book available that matched both the message of my training and the point of Sure Step as a methodology.

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Diagnostic Phase – a signpost for implementation

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Each phase of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology is equally important in an implementation project. You could argue that analysis is the most important, or that design is the most important, or that operation is less important. I’ll paraphrase Scott Adams here and ask: how one phase can be more important if each of them is completely necessary? Well, except for Diagnostic phase.

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A case for Sure Step: how Sure Step brings project success

  • Reading time:8 mins read

Methodology is a tough topic. There are good methodologies, there are bad methodologies, there are good methodologies gone bad. Methodology is not a silver bullet, it won’t just make any problems disappear, and is hardly ever the single source of success or failure. But a methodology can be a major contributor to success. I could put it this way: you stand much better chances of success if you apply a methodology, then if you don’t. With something as critical as an implementation of business software, methodology is a key success factor. According to Jim Johnson of Standish Group, it’s number nine on their ten identified most important success factors.

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“Our old software” syndrome

  • Reading time:2 mins read

A few days back, while prototyping a new solution for a customer, one of the key users said: “But in our old software it didn’t work like that.” I was about to try to explain why the change, but then the user’s boss said:

– We aren’t implementing a new solution so that everything can stay the way it was.

How often does it happen to you that your customers say to you a similar thing: “But in our old system…”? What do you say to them? How do you approach change when your consultant proposes a new way of doing things, or a new approach to a common problem?

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Standard enemy

  • Reading time:4 mins read

The biggest jeopardies often lurk where we least expect them. When implementing an ERP system such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV, what should be one of our best allies, turns out to be our mortal enemy. It has a simple name: The Standard. Standard processes, standard functionality, standard documents, standard system. All these gizmos can turn into gremlins in a blink of an unattentive eye.

Standards are tricky. If during due dilligence, or diagnostic or analysis phase, we hear the prospect or customer utter the word “standard”, what do we instinctively do? Well, in a standard system, it’s pretty obvious what the standard is, and when the customer says that they “just have standard processes” it means that these processes are just covered with such a standard system, right? So we instinctively tend to skip the more detailed analysis of these, because after all, they are standard.

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