Implementation Projects
Overview
An implementation project in Salesforce is the lifecycle of post sale activities leading to the Go-Live of a new salesforce environment or set of features.
Components of an Implementation
Planning and Discovery
During this phase the customer and partner will work together to determine:
- The product needs (sales vs service vs marketing, or a combination of product suites)
- Business problems the customer is looking to solve
- Teams Involved
- Planning/Timeline and Roadmap
Design and Architecture
Taking the output from discovery, Architects and project leads will work together to design the solution, integration needs, data model and begin drafting user stories. Varying styles of project management and governance will lead to different approaches in this step, but the end goal is to have a defined solution architecture in place, and a roadmap to rollout.
Configuration and Customization
After the architecture and design is finalized, build can begin. At this stage customization to Salesforce front end, object model, flow automation and potentially apex development will begin.
If any AppExchange products are needed for the initial build phase, they would also be configured during this time.
Integrations with outside systems and data integrations will also be built in this stage (respective to the needs of the roadmap). One thing of note, projects often take an MVP approach, where a subset of features may be rolled out to a smaller audience, thus changing some of the timing for more complex builds.
This is often done on larger projects, or those where the change may be more of a trial than a known “need”, in those scenarios, this step can be more fluid and is of no negative impact.
Testing
Testing can take many forms and flows, but the components remain the same: Unit Testing, UAT/Bug Resolution and Integration testing.
There are third party tools that offer automated testing capabilities within Salesforce and are used on larger projects.
Training and Change Management
Again, size of project is a determining factor in scale of this step, but there should be education to the user base around using Salesforce as well as feature addition/deprecation.
Something as simple as a word doc or slides can suffice, or something as complex as recorded walkthrough(s) and champions for teams that train their direct reports.
The choice is truly based on the size of the project, the project team, and the ability of day-to-day employees to meaningfully engage.
Deployment and Go-Live
After testing and change are wrapped up, a plan for go-live should be in place to start the push for release.
Any data pulls from legacy systems should have clear cutover dates.
Rollout planning depends upon project focus, but users should be activated and ready to login the morning of go-live.
Deployment to production and regression testing should be complete before the go-live date to ensure there are no hiccups or hold ups.
Post-Implementation Support
Whether using Managed Services or internal resources (or a combination of the two) BAU should start immediately following go-live. Triaging bugs, enhancements and new build should be a continuous cycle to ensure a healthy CRM.
Who is Impacted?
End Users
Successful implementations lead to quick feature adoption and improved efficiencies for end users.
Leadership
Leadership can easily track status, progress, issues and successes when following an implementation plan during a salesforce project.