Who is needed in the team for Dynamics 365 project success?

Ryan Ingram, 05 August 2020

So, you’re considering launching into a new Dynamics 365 project (whether a new deployment, upgrade or migration)??

One of the key things to understand is what kind of resources and how much time should you allocate to your team to ensure the project has the best chance of success. We’ve found that going into a Dynamics 365 deployment knowing what is expected of your employees is critical. You need to manage expectations and ensure the business continues to track to your core objectives while some key people have extra responsibilities.

(Disclaimer: Obviously the exact make up and time allocated to your team should be unique to your organisation and deployment – in size, shape and experience. Below is an indication – please contact us if you have any questions about your Dynamics 365 deployment).

1. Product Owner: This will need to be one (or many) C-Level representative(s) that have oversight across the entire organisation. This person(s) will drive the vision of the project and take ownership of the implementation (can be as a whole or just the deployment of) and make any executive decisions.
Time commitment is usually around 10-20% of their time for the duration of the engagement.
2. Project Manager: This person will be core to the relationship with our team. This is to have a very good idea of the project as a whole and rally people, help push things from a day-to-day perspective. Time commitment is usually around 50% of their time.
3. Change Manager: A change manager can help with the adoption of new technology. We have found that the need for one of these is determined by the size of the organisation, the complexity of the deployment and the internal teams within your organisation. In the absence of a change manager, a good trainer is the most important.
4. Trainer: We normally run train the trainer sessions. So, we will need someone on client side to adopt this new technology and learn how to train new recruits going forward. The person will need to be tech savvy and will be trained prior to User Acceptance Testing. They also need to be involved at a full capacity in the UAT phase.  They need to have a good understand how the business operates. Time commitment ramps up to 100% a week prior to UAT and within UAT.
5. Subject matter experts (multiple) need to be available throughout the project and when a project kick into UAT. Need a day or so a week depending on the complexity, not just a few hours a week, they need around a day a week to do UAT.

When we deploy a system, we take the time to understand your organisation and have the experience to see where you may have great expertise and where you may be light – and we’ll look to augment this gap. To ensure we stick to our Zero Failed Implementations (ZFI) Promise – we’ll get this right from the outset.