Sure Step

Microsoft releases Sure Step 2012

  • Reading time:9 mins read

imageA couple of days ago, at a Sure Step 2010 training at Sundsgården, Helsingborg, Sweden, while students were preparing to take the exam, one of the students asks me where she can download Sure Step 2010. I give her the link, but she tells me: “No, that’s Sure Step 2012, I’d like to download 2010”.

That came as a surprise. “No way” – I say – “It hasn’t yet been released.”

Or has it?

And then I check, and almost can’t believe it – it’s really there. I completely missed the tweets, the Facebook announcement, the LinkedIn discussions. It seems that I’m not particularly social nowadays. A quick check of Twitter shows me that there wasn’t too much buzz around it, and most of the blogosphere simply redelivers the same content, which either comes from the official announcement (which I also missed Smile) or from whoever blogged first.

Instead of giving a simple “excited” redelivery of the announcement, here’s my take on Sure Step 2012, what’s new, what’s not new (both sadly and thankfully).

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Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step 2010 Content Update

  • Reading time:1 min read

fireworksI missed this by ten days, but it’s not exactly yesterday’s news yet. Microsoft has released a content update for Sure Step 2010, bringing some new content for NAV, AX, GP and CRM, and also introducing some functional changes to Sure Step application.

Here’s what’s new in the latest release:

  • GP 2010 updates, now with guidance on Project Accounting, Business Intelligence reporting, upgrade questionnaires and links to the business process flows. 
  • Management Reporter questionnaire applicable to all ERP solutions. 
  • Service Industry-specific content for AX, including guidance for:
    • Professional Services, included Legal Services and Government Contractors
    • Advertising
    • Architecture, Engineering and Construction
  • AX Process Flows added for Human Resourcces, Quality and Master Planning.
  • NAV Process Flows, Go Live List and Upgrade Questionnaires updated.
  • Microsoft SharePoint 2010 site project creation, enhanced to allow sub-site creation. 
  • CRM Customer Care Accelerator with fact sheets, presentations, questionnaire with fit analysis and architecture assessment.

If you have access to PartnerSource, you can access Sure Step 2010 here.

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Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step 2010: RAW

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step 2010: RAWI woke up this morning with a fantastic news in my mailbox: Chandru’s and Vincent’s upcoming book Microsoft Dynamics NAV Sure Step 2010 is already available at PACKT Publishing’s web site in a format I wasn’t even aware it existed: RAW (Read As we Write). The book isn’t finished yet, but you can already purchase the e-book with those chapters that have been completed.

I was aware of this book being in development, but had to stay quiet, and I was really looking forward to announcing it here. I am only sorry I couldn’t do it immediately this morning.

With so much interest in Sure Step lately, I can’t imagine a better time for this book to be written. Book authors are Chandru Shankar, a member of the Sure Step team and one of the people who are authoring and managing the development of Sure Step, and Vincent Bellefroid, an expert in Sure Step and a member of the extended Sure Step team, who has also participated in development of many Sure Step training and readiness materials, train-the-trainer program, and one of the leading providers of Sure Step trainings in Europe. It can’t get any better than this, and this book is worth your investment.

Chandru and Vincent – congratulations! This is a fantastic addition to the world of Sure Step. And Thank You in the name of all of us working with and using the methodology!

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7 Sure Steps to pass the Sure Step exam

  • Reading time:7 mins read

Århus, DenmarkAnother Sure Step course is over, this time in Århus, Denmark. I love and hate teaching this course, because it always makes me wonder why I need this, and why in the Earth I am doing this trainer’s job. And then makes me happy that I do and eager to do it again as soon as possible. It also teaches me something, every time, and here are my lessons learned.

This time, it’s about the exam. At the beginning of the training, I usually ask people about their goals: why are they there, what is the primary objective why they are sitting there and listening to me babble for two days? With Sure Step, the answer is an invariable: to pass the exam.

So people go there because they were sent by their employers to pass the exam, because having professionals certified in Sure Step on team is now a requirement for being a Microsoft Certified Partner for Dynamics.

So, here is my shot at how to prepare for, and pass the exam.

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Solution overview: hablamos tutti die gleiche language?

  • Reading time:4 mins read

One of the biggest obstacles of the ERP projects is the language. Not the spoken language, such as Spanish or German, but the lingo of the business, of the branch, of the company. The consultants speak their lingo. The customer speaks theirs. Especially in the early stages, the projects can fall apart on understanding each other.

If there is one profound risk that all ERP projects share, it’s that during requirement analysis and early stages of design the consultant won’t understand the customer’s need, and that the customer won’t really understand what consultant is proposing. A bad choice, and there goes another failed project.

Luckily, there is a tool in Sure Step which is used specifically to eliminate this risk of misunderstanding: the Solution Overview.

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Sure Step or Sure Wheel?

  • Reading time:10 mins read

Sure Step or Sure Wheel?Almost exactly two years ago, incited by a comment from a reader, I wrote an article in defense of Sure Step: Read My Lips: Why?. The point was: is Sure Step a new methodology, or is it just a wheel reinvented?

After having taught about a dozen of Sure Step courses all over Europe (and just preparing to take my flight to Århus, Denmark to teach the next one), I’ve decided to prepare an overview of how Sure Step aligns with other methodologies. Students often ask me about this, and often come with previous knowledge of existing methodologies. Being able to map your existing knowledge to Sure Step will be of great help to learn and understand Sure Step in the future.

So, here is a little reverse-engineering of Sure Step from methodology point of view, and an overview of how it aligns specifically with MSSP, MSF, PMBOK, Scrum and MOF.

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10 reasons that make design absolutely necessary

  • Reading time:12 mins read

Unfinished buildings, by net_efekt (on Flickr)Design is one of a kind. Other phases in Sure Step are understood and accepted as good and necessary. But design, do we really do that? Is it really necessary? Who’s going to pay for it? Does the customer really need all those documents? Instead of writing documents, you could have it developed in the same, or less time. And so on and so forth.

As a matter of fact, if you asked me to pick one single most important phase in a Sure Step project, then it’s the design. No second thoughts here, whatsoever.

Here I list the ten most important reasons that I believe make design absolutely indispensable.

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Sure Step in action: business process change

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Service Providers (or colloquially partners) often refrain from undertaking organization or process changes during implementation projects of Microsoft Dynamics solutions. And it comes as no surprise: there are many risks related to it, and customizations are taken as a more traditional approach.

Customizations are easy to predict, they do come at risk, but at least the risks are known and often easily managed entirely within service provider’s organization and reach, while organizational change is unpredictable, and often exceeds consultants’ knowledge, experience and expertise.

However, with or without intention or consent, organizational change will always happen. No solution has ever been 100% fit, and since the customer must do their business with the solution, the remainder from fit to 100% will always and without exception be satisfied with an unmanaged, unintentional, but evolutionary process change.

Instead of leaving it all to chance, Sure Step offers much better ways.

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Sure Step in action: a blurry Degree of Fit?

  • Reading time:4 mins read

image Sometimes the Degree of Fit might seem like comparing apples and oranges. With 90 extremely detailed fits, and 10 high-level gaps, the degree of fit seems high, but it isn’t. 90 extremely detailed gaps, and 10 high-level fits, make the degree of fit seem low. In either case the degree of fit is unreliable and it doesn’t tell you anything at all.

For a degree of fit to be reliable, all the requirements should be specified roughly on the same level of detailedness. If they aren’t, you might have an extremely risky project before you, and you just don’t see it. Or you might have a slam dunk, and you stand scared to death by the non-existent risks you see all over.

In situations such as these you have to level the requirements to get a more meaningful figure, otherwise your Fit Gap Analysis doesn’t serve its purpose.

But how exactly do you tell apples from oranges in a requirements list?

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Sure Step Proficiency Assessment

  • Reading time:1 min read

Microsoft Partner Network Many of my Sure Step students have asked me if there are any practice tests, like MeasaureUp, available for Sure Step exam (MB5-858). I used to say “no”, but that has just changed. I somehow missed this, and I am not exactly sure when it appeared, but there is an online knowledge assessment tool which can help you decide whether to take the exam, or to prepare better instead.

The tool is called Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step Proficiency Assessment and is available here.

The prerequisites to access the tool are a Windows Live account, and access to Microsoft Partner Network. Since exam targets Microsoft Partners, I’m pretty sure all partners already have access. If you don’t have the access already, just click the link and it will guide you through the process of linking your Windows Live account with your Partner account.

Good luck on the exam!

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