Article

How to Substitute Agile ERP Implementation for the Waterfall Approach

by Vjekoslav Babic
NAV Consultant, Microsoft Services, Microsoft
New research about ERP projects reveals a number of unnerving facts: ERP implementations take a long time (almost always much longer than anticipated), cost more than projected, and often deliver less than a half of anticipated benefits. At the same time, general IT projects seem to deliver increasingly more predictable results.

Why the difference? General IT projects usually rely on  an increased adoption of agile methodologies.

Agile is an unpopular word in the ERP world. We, the ERP people, love the glory and the thunder of The Waterfall. It has worked for us since forever, after all. Yes, we've all seen it fail every so often, but we've learned to learn from failure, and we know there is no better approach. Don't we?

Frankly, I am not completely sure we do.

To start with, what is agile? Most of people who don't know it think of it as some sort of laissez-faire approach to software development: there aren't fixed requirements up front, so there is no order, there is anarchy.

If you thought about agile in the same way, take a look at Agile Manifesto. It doesn't sound all that bad, does it?

You can work with your partner to put many of the agile principles to work on your ERP projects by following these simple steps:

  1. Deploy vanilla ERP first: it satisfies the ...

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About Vjekoslav Babic

Vjekoslav Babić is an independent Microsoft Dynamics NAV consultant, trainer, author and blogger, with 10 years of experience in NAV and 16 years of experience in IT.

As a solutions architect and a project manager with a leading Microsoft Dynamics President's Club service provider company, as a Microsoft Dynamics NAV consultant with Microsoft Services, and as an independent consultant, he has been working on Microsoft Dynamics NAV implementations ranging from tiny one-man-bands to international mega-corporations, delivering services and trainings all over the world.

In 2008, Vjekoslav co-authored the acclaimed book "Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009". Vjekoslav runs an active blog about NAV implementation, project management and development best practices, acts as a columnist and editorial advisory board member at MSDynamicsWorld.com, and as a columnist in a number of other web or printed periodicals in Croatia and worldwide. Vjekoslav is also a frequent speaker at Microsoft or Microsoft Dynamics conferences.

Since spring 2010, Vjekoslav has been awarded the prestigious Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

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