NAV Implementations: Betting a Business On a Mad Horse? (Part 2)

The following article is adapted from the new Packt Publishing book "Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009" by Vyeksolav Babic and David Roys. 

In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the Sure Step methodology and its application for Microsoft Dynamics NAV.  Now let's step back and think about applying a methodology to building a house.  Or conversely, let's think about build a house without a methodology.

What kind of house do you need? A house. Do you need one floor, two floors? Well, just start building it, then we'll see where we get. Would you like an entrance from the street, or from the court side? Just put one somewhere, we'll move it later if we need to. Plastic window frames or wooden window frames? Doesn't really matter.

Uh-oh!

With this approach, it's going to be a long journey before this house is built, and I don't want to be there when the bill arrives, and it will probably go down with the first breeze.

The same is true with software projects, especially with large scale projects such as implementations of ERP systems, including Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. There are many components, many considerations, and many different needs that one single system must address, and to make it stable and reliable, we need to take some preemptive steps.

When customers decide to implement a business management system, they usually start with a predetermined budget, and often they already have a desired go-live date in mind. Often they have an idea of what kind of business problem they want to solve. They want to ...