Diagnostic Phase – First Step towards Project Success

Megha Kainth, 02 May 2011

Each phase has an important role in Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step Methodology. I believe the most important phase is the Diagnostic phase – yet this phase is often executed poorly. The Diagnostic phase establishes the foundation for the implementation phases and the work done in the Diagnostic phase impacts the success or failure of the Project.

The purpose of the Diagnostic phase is to evaluate whether there should even be a project and if so, to determine the scope of the project. These crucial decisions must be made on the basis of risk minimisation and return on their investment.

The Diagnostic Phase encompasses seven Decision Accelerator offerings which facilitate the decision making process so that the Client can easily determine whether a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution is a good option. The seven Decision Accelerator offerings are Requirements and Process Review, Fit Gap and Solution Blueprint, Proof of Concept, Business Systems Architecture Assessment, Scoping Assessment, Business Case and, Upgrade Assessment. Not all Decision Accelerators are appropriate in a particular project – perhaps because the project is too small to warrant the cost or because it is simply not applicable. For example an Upgrade Assessment is not required if there is to be new hardware.

The Decision Accelerator that we find particularly helpful is the Fit Gap Analysis tool. We use it to clearly summarise the information needed to decide whether Dynamics CRM is a good “fit” with the customer’s requirements and to determine which features should be included in the solution – and hence the scope of the project.

We do that by preparing a Fit-gap report (in the form of a spreadsheet) which lists the possible solution features (mainly based on requests from the Client) together with our perceived categorisation of the feature (must-have, nice-to-have, future)and an estimate of time/cost.  This document becomes the basis of a scoping discussion with the client with the aim of determining the features to be included within the budget available.  In some cases a bigger project is divided into a series of smaller projects in the course of this scoping discussion – which may be beneficial in terms of risk-minimisation and spreading the cost over a longer time period.

The information in the Fit-gap report also allows the Client to apply some ROI analysis to the possible features because they can compare the benefit (time saving, response-time etc) with the cost.  At this stage, some features may be eliminated or deferred.

In my next post I will cover the next phase of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step Methodology, the Analysis phase. Stay tuned till then!