If you’ve ever built your own house you’ll certainly appreciate the importance of comprehensive, intelligent and well thought through planning.
The foundations are never the most exciting part of any project but they are arguably the most important. It’s all the unglamorous work that’s done below ground that is not seen by many and largely unappreciated, that forms the basis and structure for the building above.
So it is with any IT implementation project. It’s the work that is done upfront in preparing the business requirements and the specific business scenarios that will determine the structure that is afterwards overlaid on this platform, and ultimately it’s overall chances of success.
Yes it is time-consuming and may not be particularly satisfying when instead the urge is to race ahead with looking at what exciting options might be presenting themselves in the market for you. Nevertheless it is essential to be able to measure against this criteria to evaluate how you are progressing and the final success of the solution implementation.
It also has the added benefit of providing focus for solution partners and holding them accountable to the real intended business outcomes of the project.
