Project Management in BPPM Implementation - Part 3: Phased approach vs. big bang release

I have been to several rescue missions.  They all had something in common: An organization had one or more consultants working on a new implementation for 6-9 months and made to a big production release with a long list of features. Shortly after that, they noticed that things just didn't work as expected. They didn't know where to begin to investigate.  Worse than that, they ran out of budget.

A few organizations I ended up helping rescue the implementation were lucky enough for allocating additional budget. But many organizations were not so lucky.  Their internal staff had to spend months to figure out which piece worked and which piece didn't.

At each rescue mission, I noticed the client had some service models built in its initial implementation but the service models didn't work due to issues in monitoring events.  When I asked why, all of them said that they were so impressed with service models in BMC product demo that they didn't realize the dependency between service models and monitoring events.  When I discussed re-implementation options with them, all of them agreed not to include service models in the initial implementation.

On the other hand, phased approach has worked much better.  Each organization may have a different reason for purchasing BPPM license at the first place,  but all organizations want to see positive ROI from BPPM after all.  Here are just a few reasons why phased approach may work better for you:

1) Phased approach allows you to see ROI much sooner.  Instead of waiting for 6-9 months for a big production release, phased approach can give you a small initial production release as soon as 3 months.  For example, instead of implementing all 10 features on all your servers, you can implement 5 features on 1/2 of your servers first.

2) BPPM is a very complex product.  Each new release of BPPM contains new features that may or may not work in your environment on the first try.  By implementing a few features first, you can ease the learning curve and build expertise one piece at a time.

3) Many detailed requirements such as event correlation and dynamic thresholds can only be finalized after running BPPM in production for a while.  A phased approach helps you plan the next set of features based on live data not just estimated data.

4) Not all issues can be detected during QA test.  If there are issues after the previous phase goes production, you still have the time and budget to fix them.  And these issues may help you plan the next phase better.

5) Phased approach allows your implementation staff (or consultants) and your operations support staff work more closely with on-going knowledge transfer and feedback.  

6) Phased approach allows you to target on 'low hanging fruits' first.  The sooner you can see positive ROI from BPPM, the better chance you have to convince your management for additional budget for advanced features.