When you implement an IWMS, you learn as you go. During the project the scope changes more than once due to various reasons. As the scope of the project changes (obviously with consequences), some functionalities have been implemented, whereas others got deleted from the scope.
These functionalities that were deleted from the list often have an immense improvement potential for your IWMS. Therefore, today’s task is about functionalities that have not been implemented, but are on your wish list.
Today’s teaching
Everyone is familiar with wish lists. Your first experience with wish lists was probably when you were a child and you had to write your favorite presents on a piece of paper for Thanksgiving, Christmas, your birthday or any other occasion.
Wish lists are very useful and help you to get what you want. They are also a great reminder to call for action. No wonder that Amazon and other online shops allow you to create a wish list. The wish list will remind you to fulfill certain tasks (buy books from Amazon).
Wish lists for Integrated Workplace Management Systems are not really common good but could prove to be extremely helpful in improving your IWMS implementation. They help you identifying the greatest functional need. In addition to that, a carefully designed wish list could support you with your budget approvals.
Items on the wish list
Not all items you can think about are suited for the wish list. Therefore, you need to make a distinction and categorize the list. As with most Requests for Proposal (RFP), there should be a clear distinction between the following items:
Critical items
These items are either in itself or by close relation to another implemented functionality critical. Without these items (a part of) the solution will not be operational.
Must haves
These items are important but tend to be more isolated and thus less impacting for the entire solution. From a functional perspective within the domain these are firm requirements.
Nice to haves
All items that good to have but are not essential in terms of functionality or criticality.
You are going to use these categories to prioritize the items on your wish list.
How to create a wish list
Create an Excel (or similar) file with five columns. The five headings of the columns are:
Item
A short description of the item (Approx. 100 characters )
Solution / Module
To populate the dropdown field, you can find evaluate your contract and put all items from the contract in the field.
Priority
If you use a spreadsheet program such as Excel you can let users select from a dropdown box. This minimizes errors when filling in. The priority supports you picking from a long list of items.
Time frame
Within the list you need to be able retrieve time bound information about the item.
Count
The last column needs to be hidden for the respondents, but you are using that column to count all items.
Why I recommend using Excel is data sorting. You can immediately get an overview of all the wish list items per module, or sort the data by priority. I have created an example below for Lease Management
| Item | Solution / Module | Priority | Time frame | Count |
| Contract Registration | Lease Management | Critical | Immediately | IIIII |
| Clauses | Lease Management | Must have | .. weeks | III |
| Contract templates | Lease Management | Nice to have | .. months | III |
Today’s task
You are going to create your wish list in today’s task. In addition to that you are going to distribute the list to responsible staff accordingly.
- Create an Excel template with at least 10 rows
- Create 10 items that are not in your IWMS but need to be implemented
- Send the template to at least 5 employees that are involved with the IWMS.
- Collect the responses and count the numbers of wishes.
If you increase the number of employees that are going to be questioned, you are more likely to discover quite some wishes.
Good luck
