ProfServProjects

This article gives a detailed overview of the process to run an Open-Xchange implementation project together with professional services team.

The phases and decisions are documented here, as well as the documents used to accompany this process.

The following diagram gives a birds-eye view of the whole process:

Initialization Phase / Pre-Sales

The first phase is to evaluate the product and to evaluate the feasibility of the project as well as to identify potentially necessary customization to integrate into every environment.

At the end of this this phase, the results of the evaluation are used to provide a detailed offer and to make the final "Go" / "No-Go" decision.

• User Interface Demo and Evaluation (webcast or on-site)
• Architecture Overview
  • Integration into existing customer systems
  • Sizing, Scalability
  • Available APIs, standards and programming languages
  • Branding / Whitelabeling
• Proof Of Concept Installation (POC) in target environment
• Technology Transfer / Workshop
  • Using the agenda given below
  • Evaluate existing environment (mailsystem, loadbalancer, storage, provisioning, ..)
  • Results in Customer Implementation Concept
• RequestForInformation / RequestForQuotation

Tools and Results in the Initalization Phase

• Project Charter

The Project Charter is the one central document, outlining the whole project. It is used to document the common understanding of the whole project to ensure, having the same understanding in all projects parties.

It starts with the motivation to run the project and contains all goals and the scope of the whole project. Stakeholders on both sides are defined as well as detailed responsibilities and milestones to measure progress. Also further organization of the project is specified including details about documentation, reporting and communication.

All efforts, which are already known at this stage of the project are listed in this document.

• Workshop Agenda

This document containing the Workshop Agenda is used to prepare for the initial technical workshop. The goal of the workshop is to get a common understanding of all existing infrastructure systems and the capabilities of the OX product. The preparation document lists all persons/roles, who should attend the workshop as well as the topics, which will be covered within a typical evaluation workshop.

• Customer Implementation Concept

This Customer Implementation Concept outlines all results from the technical evaluation until this point in time, mainly resulting from the workshop. It contains all results from the initialization phase, as well as all already known topics, to be discussed and analyzed in the future.

This is a "living document" as well in that it is updated during the project to reflect the current state of affairs.

• Basic Statement Of Work

The "Basic Statement Of Work (SOW)" describes in detail all Open-Xchange implementation-efforts already known and agreed upon at this point in time.

Concept Phase

During this phase it is decided what exactly there is to do, by whom and when. The resulting Customer Implementation Concept formalizes this information, accompanied by (several) SOWs which detail Open-Xchange efforts.

• Detail-Workshops
  • installing a test-system
• Adaption
  • tailoring the system to the partners environment (authentication, provisioning etc.)
• Resources / Time
  • these are estimated based on knowledge of past projects
• Budget
  • this is etimated by the partner
• Milestones
  • are set to measure progress
• Quality Management
  • set up monitoring tools
• Risk Management
  • address common difficulties in most projects
  • tracked in the Requirements Checklist as well

Tools

• Implementation Concept from the last phase (living document)
• Requirements Checklist from the last phase (living document)
• WorkBreakdownStructure mindmeister.com-format pdf rtf
• several SOWs (preferrably one per topic)

Implementation

During this phase everything that was planned before will be realized.

• Installation / Configuration of the live-system
• Integration
  • custom functionality
• Customization
  • branding etc.
• Documentation
  • all systems involved. including responsibilities, test-accounts
• Quality Management
• Change Management
  • new requirements are also tracked via the Requirements Checklist
• Training
  • administrators / support staff

Tools

• Requirements Checklist (continously expanded)
• OX Test protocols

Approval

During this phase everything that was realized will be checked (again) to make sure it is ready and exactly to the partners wishes. As soon as that is the case it is our recommendation to do a "soft-launch", a launch of the production system but with only a limited number of users (ca. 5%). When that is done successfully and any last-minute issues are uncovered and fixed the product is launched.

• Tests
• Review
• Soft-Launch
• Migration
• Handover to Support

• detailed technical documentation including test-accounts, credentials, people in charge etc.
• Customer tests
• Lessons learned
• Open-Xchange-internal project retrospective
• Handover to Open-Xchange support
  • test OTRS process

Tools

• Meeting Minutes These minutes cover attendees to a meeting, topics discussed, decisions made and action items.
• Requirements Checklist ... This list produced during the previous phase contains agreed upon and done items. These should be checked again in this phase by the customer´s quality assurance team for the live system.
• Customer test protocols