Documentation is important in every implementation. Because our mind tends to trick us in all kinds of ways, written documentation will help you retrieve specific information about the project.
Most IWMS vendors implement their systems according to certain project management methodologies. However, I have encountered a lot of customers that were not able to handover project documentation to me.
As one of my customers told me; ‘We just ran out of time and decided not to write the documentation, for now.’ You can probably guess what happened. Nothing. They never wrote the documentation at all.
After the project was completed (partially successful), everybody returned to their daily routines of which writing documentation was not part of. The customer had implemented a six-figure system but hadn’t documented anything…
As a rule of thumb:
Not documenting your IWMS implementation will get you into trouble, period.
And so it did…
Two key members of the customers’ implementation team left the organization two weeks after the initial go-live date. With them leaving was an extensive amount of knowledge about the project, decisions, processes, procedures, etc. Because nothing had been documented the replacements were not able to provide support adequately to the demanding organization.
After a six months struggle and a loss of thousands of dollars, the customer decided to hire external advice. I was brought on board to assess and solve the situation for this particular customer.
I quickly discovered that no documentation was available at all. My personal advice to the customer was to start a project to document the IWMS implementation project.
After a couple of weeks of intensive work, the customer managed to gather and produce all key documentation about the IWMS implementation project. The customer created a specialized website on their portal that contained all this documentation. If an employee now decides to leave the company, the organization is not at risk.
Document!
Today’s teaching
The first post of “the 31 Day Challenge to improve your IWMS implementation” was about gathering information about your current IWMS implementation. If you haven’t produced any documentation during your implementation, you probably asked yourself whether this challenge was something for you.
I can truly say that high quality documentation will prove to be a key differentiator between successful IWMS implementations and those which are not.
By the way, high quality documentation doesn’t mean that you have to document the smallest details. On the contrary, high quality documentation for IWMS means that you document everything that will empower your organization to operate and improve the IWMS without you.
Although some of you might fear their jobs being at stake here, producing high quality documentation will not endanger your job, it will make your life only easier. Instead of adapting a system of trial and error, the documentation will support you and minimize errors.
As stated above you don’t need to document everything, however your documentation has to include at least:
Project Documentation
It is very important that some project documentation is available. Although most organizations only think about documenting everything about the software, the organizational aspects of the project are equally important.
What you should document as an absolute minimum is:
- Project Scope
- Project Deliverables
- Project Goals
- Terms and Conditions
- Project Team Members
- Project Decisions
These documents will enable to your organization to easily define why the project has been initiated and what should have been delivered. In addition to that, it is also extremely important to document the project organization; the project team members.
Technical Documentation
In most selection procedures customers specifically ask for technical documentation. However, after installation of the software this documentation is often not available centrally.
One of the reasons for this problem is the commitment of the IT department. Their job is it to keep the system up and running, however they are not paid to write or collect documentation. This is the job of the project team responsible.
The technical documentation you should collect includes:
- Solution Architecture
- Hardware requirements
- Installation manuals
- Supported Configurations of databases, third party software, and other configurations.
Most of this technical documentation is available upon request from your IWMS vendor. If the vendor provides online access, in most cases you can find the documentation there.
Functional Documentation
In every implementation there should be an extensive amount of functional documentation available. The functional documentation can help you to identify certain improvement possibilities. The functional documentation should include:
- Business process descriptions and flow charts
- Module overview
- Configuration screenshots
- User groups and Authorizations
I would recommend collecting and storing documentation based on the module / solution. This will enable people to retrieve this documentation easily.
What is most important about the functional documentation is that also includes all decisions made for a particular configuration. Why did you do it the way you did? That information will prove to be very useful.
Training Documentation
I have seen quite a lot of implementations that have documented the above three types of documentation. However in most cases training documentation is not available which is too bad. Training documentation can save a significant amount of your training budget. Training documentation should include:
- Training Manuals
- Training Scenarios
- Training Videos
- Training Evaluation
- Other training material
By documenting all training related information you will be able to train new staff / other staff members without the IWMS vendor. This empowers your with great flexibility in your training program. You can train whenever people require training.
Support Documentation
Although support documentation is also very important, you have been working in two other posts to provide IWMS support:
- Day 12: Create a Frequently Asked Questions Website
- Day 27: Develop Task Based Knowledge Management for your IWMS
When you have produced all the documentation listed above you truly empower your organization with an excellent application that is ready to use and can be improved despite dynamic staff changes.
Today’s task
Producing documentation and storing this documentation is your task of today. Although I am fully aware that most of you will have some documentation, and that the production of documentation is time consuming, your task today is produce documentation.
Good Luck.
