From the course: Business Analysis Foundations

Solution implementation planning

From the course: Business Analysis Foundations

Solution implementation planning

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- The project manager and the team are gone. They've moved on to bigger and better things leaving you behind to make sure that what you did is actually going to be used. It falls upon the business analyst to work directly with the receiving organization to make sure the solution is used and meets the original expectations. Especially when there's a substantial change to the way they've been doing things before, it's going to be hard. All of our work was meant to move the organization from a current state to a desired future state, but even when that future state was desired, planned, tested, and approved, it can still meet with resistance. The acceptance of the change needs to be continually evaluated. At this point, as a business analyst, I'm probably going to do more shadowing. This is so I can see if and how the result is being implemented. I'm identifying things that need to be fixed and possible future requirements. The solution we put in may have been good, but often it only fixes a portion of the problem. It's the job of the business analyst to identify that need and propose it for future enhancement. The support for the actual implementation of the result often includes additional funds and resources. Sometimes you've got to have a support team. For example, if you put in a new piece of software, you'll need a help desk or similar resources to support it. This could be either internal to the organization or done by an external group. This is a typical situation for software applications. This support group may not only require additional and ongoing funding, but often requires specific documentation and training. The business analyst sets up the support team and provides them with information about the solution. Just like you supplied the development team with information, now you're working with a support team. The change might also require individual coaching and support by either key business people or the business analyst. Regardless how the ongoing support is delivered, there's always a need to track the result of the changes made to help determine if the expected results are being delivered. The process of tracking and reporting should have been included in any transition and implementation planning effort. We always need to remember that after resources have been consumed to deliver the new result or solution, we can't go from the as is or current state to the to be or future state only to return to the as was.

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