Four steps to success of software projects - Step 3

Once you have your goals and vision and have identified your team, you need to look at your business process.

Your business process is the list of activities that you do to deliver the results that you are looking for. Since you are trying to improve the results that you get, obviously you need to change the activities. The software that you buy will require a change to the activities that you do. Even if the method of recording is the only difference, something will change. In addition to just automating activities, software comes with built in assumptions about how you will go about using it.

The is the big mistake that many organizations make! They assume that all they are doing is using a new tool. The approach to doing these activities will change! You are trying to deliver a different set of results.

Albert Einstein once said: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result". The opposite is also true. You can't expect to improve the results that you receive by continuing to do the same activities.

You start by describing the activities that you now do. This is extremely important! Everybody will make assumptions about what is going on, and they will be wrong. The devil is in the details. Once you know what is happenning today, you can look at what you need to do to get the improvements that you are looking for. This lays the foundation for the new flow of activities.

This new set of activities and the flow between activities and people will provide you with a new set of business outcomes and benefits. The process will show you what you must do to deliver the business outcomes. It will also provide you with a specific set of requirements for the software that you will purchase. You have a direct relatiosnhip between the software requirements and the business outcomes.

These four elements: activities, flow, business outcomes and benefits, will provide you with the basis for success.