Community Article: Project Success: From the As Is, To Be and on to deployment

I hope everyone is having a great Friday! I know it's been a crazy week, and frankly I can't believe that it's already over. I wanted to write this Friday on my monthly column for the Microsoft Dynamics Community Site. The focus for this month for that column, is around Project Success.

You can find a direct link to the article here.: Project Success: From the As Is, To Be and on to deployment

From the article:
"What we must understand, from a higher level, still needs to be clear at this point. This is being able to map correctly, with the customer their 'As-Is' story, to help set where they are and how they achieve their current process. Moving from that Analysis / Discovery set of processes, the next step from a business process modeling point of view, is creating the 'To-Be' story. This 'To-Be' story should align with higher level value points, that the customer lays out, from the single question, of: 'What exactly are you trying to do?'"

I believe, as I stated in my article, this is a worthy topic, and one that I plan on bringing a host of Dynamics Community professionals, for helping shape and talk to the points around project success.

I hope your enjoy the read, and as always please send along your thoughts, information, feedback and even stories that you feel might could help in the telling of such a story as Project Success. If you do, and wish it, you will receive credit of course, and so make sure to include your information, LinkedIn, etc.

That's all for this week, may you all have a great and blessed weekend! Till Next Time!

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RapidStart Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is live!

RapidStart Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is live! PartnerSource or CustomerSource access is required to get access to it.

The link on PartnerSouce can be found here.: Microsoft Dynamics ERP - RapidStart Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX

From the post:
"Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services allows organizations to easily configure business processes and modules thru an intuitive interview style questionnaire. Organizations can answer questions specific to their business processes and based on the responses to questions the necessary records for those business processes are created. Time of configure Microsoft Dynamics ERP can be greatly reduced and allow organizations to spend time on value add services."

The link contains a download, services guide as well as configuring projects guide. I've looked at this now, and it really has the possibility of truly helping out projects of all sizes.

The first focus for this offering, for out-of-the-box questions and templates is around U.S. & Canada Financials, with a lot more planned offerings to come.

Based on the guide, this is a Partner focused effort, in which a Partner would on-board it's customers, and in turn then can enable the RapidStart Services for that given project. From there, an On-Premise connector is what enables the connection to this Azure based software, and let me say again, this is pretty dang cool. I would say bye-bye rapid configuration tool, hello to the next generation!

What I think is very cool about this offering, is the fact that Partners, and even implementation projects, can tailor the use of this tool, for their needs. Like all software, the community has to dig in, and start to see real value out of this. However I see this becoming a staple in all AX 2012 projects.

If your a partner, or even in the midst of a AX 2012 deployment already, this needs to be looked at now to see how it can help your implementation. If your an ISV, you need to be looking at this, so that you can create templates, that tailor the RapidStart Services to include Rapid Configuration ability to your IP for AX 2012.

The official product launch, or RTM, is not for some weeks, so you can look at this as being the GA release of RapidStart Services. I've heard several people from Microsoft comment on this is just the first release, in which many more or planned to have out-of-the-box questions and templates.

So if you have access, go check this out now!

That's all for this post, till next time!

Update: There is now further documentation about RapidStart Services over on TechNet: Help for Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services users [AX 2012]



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Dynamics AX project success - Business Processes Streamlined

When entering into a new implementation, one of the key things that needs to happen for a project to be a success is the discovery phase. This phase is very much customer intensive as they must provide the consultants with business process documentation and review of such documentation. The point of this phase is to really define the full scope of the project. In doing so you create the real project plan, and can start to talk about educated timelines, vs. wild guessing of such. So the discovery phase is very important, and has a lot of key aspects to it. One of which is making sure the customer takes advantage of the time to review their business processes and use of software to see if they can steamline their BPs. This is one of the Points in implementing a new ERP, or parts there of, for taking advantage of what the ERP offers out of the box, and also what needs to be modified to achieve the business needs.

To often I have been involved with projects, or heard of projects, where the customer wanted the new system to do exactly the same as the old system. This is understandable, but the real benefit and actual point of this is missed. See what the goal should be is to achieve the business need, but possibly with totally new ways and new business processes. Now it does not make sense to add work to achieve the same ends, but the goal would be for the customer to look at their business processes in an entire new way, the Dynamics AX way.

So while the overall Discovery phase is most very important, an outlet or faucet of the phase is taking the time and having the customer see and take advantage of reviewing the business processes at hand and streamline them with the new solution. Proper planning for this can make sure such streamlining is considered in the project plan, and therefore timelines can be meant at a better percentage rate.

Well check back as I continue to post. I will be switching back to more technical postings, as well as some surprise post that might interest a few of you!

Find a job at: www.DynamicsAXJobs.com

Dynamics AX project success - Performance Tuning the system

Now that I talked about some key project management level area's of success I wanted to jump to something that I don't think a lot Dynamics AX projects think about, until it's a problem. That is Performance Tuning!

What this means, for me, is starting at the SQL Server level and working your way out. Use the tools at hand for analysis of SQL Query plans, adjust clustered indexes that may not be correct for even out of the box tables, and make sure for your custom add-on's correct index creation exist for reducing table scans, and making more use of Index seeks.

So performance tuning is a big part, and should be a part of the project plan. If your a customer and do not see this, demand it happen. It will be an added action item for a technical level person, but it's Well worth the time and money it takes to do this for a customer. The reason why, in doing so, the tuning might really speed up a lot of processes. If that is the case, well just think about it and add up the time saved to do a task, several thousand times over, and the equates to performance gains for every other thing done, because SQL Server can complete job X faster, jobs Y, Z will be faster as well!

So please as part of projects, to make them a success, have performance tuning as part of it. This does not just apply to custom modules, code, and tables, this applies to all functional area's that wil be used for the customer.

Well check back soon as I continue to post!

Find a job at: www.DynamicsAXJobs.com

Dynamics AX project success - Customer Ownership & Expectations

I would like to take some time and talk about some success factors for a Dynamics AX project. Of course some of this can apply to other projects as well, but I believe it's important to understand what makes a complex, or simple implementation of Dynamics AX a success.

So with that said, two of the area's I want to start off with for having a successful Dynamics AX project is Customer Ownership, and customer expectations. These two are for sure key elements in having a successful Dynamics AX project. First let's take a look at customer expectations, since really this is set during the sales cycle of a project.
You see customer expectations are based on what we tell them, and their assumptions from what we tell them. Making sure you do a great walk through, and functionality worksheet with them can really make or break the implementation teams life on the project. Make sure the customer understands what parts are estimated to be mods to fulfill their business needs, what is offered out of the box, and even setting the customers expectations that the real scope of the project can only be done during the discovery phase of the given project. Doing this, the customer expects to have their business processes heavily analyzed, and will expect they have a lot to do in the start of project. Having a customer not understand this, and thinking DAX can do everything they need in 3 months, with hardly no coding means you have an ignorant timeline, wrong expectations, and a very un-happy customer in the end when discovery is actually done and it really took 6 months instead of 3. Now let me break here and say, working out a project budget from past experience with a customer is something very acceptable. Just setting that as a budget awarness, help puts constraints on what the customer might request for the given project, and what the customer will decide as a possible later phase. Also I would like to point out that customer expectations are continued to be developed well into the project. It's not just on the sales & marketing team, but also on the implementation team to keep setting and meeting customer expectations. The proper management of such expectations lead to better understood deliverables for the project, and a happier customer, which translates into a happier project team.

The next part is customer ownership, and just as important as the expectations, can be something that will make or break a project for being considered a success. If a customer takes ownership of the project, then they are involved, understand throughout the process, and when you go live a more prepared solution. This means the solution has had it's new owners hands on it more, understood by the new owner, and again translate to a more successful project. If a customer does not take ownership, then the project suffers from lack of input, and the end result is a solution the customer does not fully understand, and possibly does not even like when going live. Of all the important elements for a successful project, this is sometimes the hardest to work on. The customers attitude towards the change, the user base, the management, all are part of this element. It's up to the project management and entire project team to get and keep the customer engaged enough in the project to where they are taking ownership, and therefore having input.

So there is the first two topics that I wanted to talk a bit about. Of course you can go on and on, show examples, etc. but I believe the point is made. Customer expectations and taking ownership are keys to a successful project.

Well check back soon as I continue to post!

Find a job at: www.DynamicsAXJobs.com