Truthfully, we should look for ways to improve not only ourselves but also our processes.
At our company this means looking for ways to improve the way we deliver projects to our clients.
Every project is managed using our own tool. And every project starts with a template. The master template includes our best practices for every project. Once it is selected for a new project, it is customized with details of that individual client.
Every quarter we have a business review of our master Dynamics CRM project template to find ways to improve operational efficiency.
Our master template is our secret to successful project management.
For example, a while back we had a situation where a client’s IT infrastructure did not meet the minimum requirements for Dynamics CRM. But nobody realized this until we were down the road with the project. It was embarrassing for us to go back to the customer and say, “Well, you are going to need to buy all of the software and resources to upgrade your IT infrastructure before we can even start.”
We wanted to make sure this step was never missed again. So we included this as a task within our checklist in our CRM project template.
The project task is “Validate the customer's IT infrastructure”. Then the checklist includes:
- Verify version of the operating system client is using.
- Verify who is installing the SQL server database
- Confirm a system audit has been performed.
- Confirm current database size
The person in charge of that project can go down through the checklist and mark each item as complete. Additional information is captured in the Notes section. Once everything is complete that task is done and we can move on to the next task.
Then a report can be run that shows all the projects steps and includes the notes around each task and checklist item.
It is a wealth of information that is consistent across every one of our CRM projects.
Before an implementation officially begins we print out the initial project report and make sure that all the pre-implementations tasks are completed. Including “validating the customer’s IT infrastructure”.
By reviewing and updating our master template that starts each Dynamics CRM project, we are constantly improving our processes, our results, and ourselves.
For more details see the post: How Microsoft Partners Can Use Checklists to Manage Implementation Projects in Dynamics CRM
By AbleBridge, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Partner, now a Crowe Horwath company.
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