Early research and project analysis by informUnity

Any project carries a lot of risks. Deadlines get missed, unforeseen expenses come up, the project gets duct-taped, which gives it no chance for scaling — and that's not only a contractor's fault.

Karl Wiegers, who devoted his life to systematizing the approach to building software requirements, says that the right approach to project design saves about 30-50 % of the development budget. In our experience of custom development, we have met some paradoxical incidents: some projects with several million-budget got shut down right at the implementation stage — just because the reality failed to meet the initial demands.

Another thing is that within the framework of the waterfall methodology, which most is supported by most of the large companies, it is extremely difficult to assess the timeline and costs of the design phase without diving deep into the client's business. Abstract numbers without a clear argumentation remain incomprehensible to the customer and reflect only a certain number of man-hours allocated for the project. Often these numbers are used as a criterion for comparing several contractors within a business tender, but what can one get by comparing a few abstractions?

It's important for us that the launched project benefits the business. In this regard, we offer a new service for early research and analysis of the project. Its purpose is to identify the main risks and compile a roadmap of further development of the project. As part of the service, our experts conduct interviews with key persons of the project on the customer part (in person or via video conference), where they immerse themselves in the particularities of the client business, and based on the result of the conversation, compose a document which states the main requirements, special aspects and risks of the upcoming project.

This document can be used both as a basis for further work at the design stage and as tender documentation when choosing a contractor. It will be useful for launching both an internal project for process automation and for a completely new startup because when you find risks that are incompatible with the life span of the project, you can save money on extra and wasteful development.

The composition and content of the document varies and depends entirely on the specifics of the client's business, but since we are often asked for an example of such a doc, below you can find its average version.

Early research and project analysis document by informUnity

1. Document status

The document is composed by informUnity (informunity.ru) by order of Horns and Hooves LTD (hornesandhooves.ltd) to identify and systematize the Customer's needs for automation of the sales department.

The document contains information about the business, workflows, current system, and problems which the project is aimed to solve. Also, the document describes the proposed means and methods for solving the specified problems, the list of alleged integrations, and likely risks and dependencies of the project.

Warning! The document cannot be considered as final documentation on the project and contains information that needs to be carefully clarified at the design stage.

2. General information about Horns and Hooves LTD

Horns and Hooves LTD designs and markets software for industrial production of soap bubbles.

The company has branch offices in 48 countries. The staff consists of 4,000 employees, 3 cleaners, and a bass player. 1,500 employees and 2 cleaners are involved in the sales department and are the potential users of the future system.

3. Target audience and business specifics

3.1. Target audience

The target audience consists of 4 groups formed based on how they interact with the Customer's clients:

Each group has Senior Managers who supervise other managers of the group and are responsible for the "Q" unit (including torture devices).

Managers of all groups, including senior managers, regularly visit Alaska and other groups for internship.

3.2. Business specifics

Sales managers often work on personalized sales proposals in close cooperation with the development department.

Some of them work remotely in Portland, and some in the Alaska headquarters.

The customer company supports people with disabilities and phobias, including shuttering, color blindness, and photophobia. These specifics must be taken into account when designing the system interface.

4. Description of the current system

The company uses the self-written CRM on COBOL. Due to the particularities of the COBOL language, the system is difficult to develop and maintain, but it is natively integrated with IBM mainframes used in the main product of the company. The integration should be maintained. It is necessary to migrate the client base from the old CRM to the new one.

In the company IT-staff, there is a telephony agent, since the company still partially uses relay PBXs. The customer considers switching to virtual PBXs, but only if does not increase the project budget.

The CIO informed us that there is an email server that was configured in 1996 by a Canadian telecommunications specialist. The customer wants to transfer all mailing settings to the new system.

5. Problems description

Primary sales managers often create fake client accounts to fulfill the sales plan. Repeat sales managers then sell the client base to competitors. As a result, primary sales managers get distracted from fulfilling their duties, as they have to excuse themselves to competitors.

Corporate clients strictly demand to report documents, but claim managers tend to limit their participation with promises and moral support.

Software production and tech support are provided by a distributed team. Some of its members are in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and that's why the client claims to the program, as well as client representatives, often get lost in the jungle. It reduces repeat sales, number and loyalty of the clients.

In sales proposals, managers usually make spelling, syntactic, punctuation, stylistic, and ethical errors.

The company's IT infrastructure is outdated and needs to go to landfill.

Tech support specialists are overloaded with questions they do not know the answer to.

6. Recommendations

To achieve the objectives of the project, taking into account the problems listed above, it is recommended:

• Implement modern CRM Bitrix24

• Implement modern methods of communication with clients, including Open Lines in Bitrix24 and VoIP telephony based on Asterisk and FreePBX

• Template sales proposals by type and make it possible to personalize them and add new templates

• Create a tech support knowledge base, as well as additional support channels that are cheaper in use — forums, FAQs, branded tambourines, etc.

• Integrate verification of contractors and ID data to prevent abuse by managers

• Automate the interaction between the sales department and the development department basing on Workflows tool in Bitrix24

• Provide online and pigeon sending and processing of requests for tech support, eliminating the need in personal contact

• Customize the standard Bitrix24 interface to make it convenient for people with disabilities

• Introduce an automatic system for payment supervision and fire all account managers

• Automatically generate reports on payment results and send them to contractors

7. List of integrations

• 1996 mail server (settings migration)

• self-written COBOL CRM (data migration)

• Integration with IBM mainframes

• Configuration of Asterisk and FreePBX integration

• Integration of relay PBX (debatable)

• Integration of contractors and ID data verification system (to be selected)

8. Risks and dependencies

This document is the first block in the foundation of the design documentation. It is followed by three main design stages:

• Research and description of the workflows, and, if necessary, its' formalization;

• Functional design and interfaces prototyping;

• Tech design (data structure, method of data exchange with external systems, and migrations description).  

You can order the early research and project analysis service in our store.

In the following articles, we will share the details of the design process. Stay tuned!