Overview

This best practice provides recommendations to help you create your launch plan and schedule for your digital workplace solution.

Recommendation

Critical to the success of any project, are its timelines and schedules. When planning out the timeline for your digital workplace project, here are some helpful tips to get you started.

Timing and Schedules

• Will the solution be launched in once or in phases?
• What are your corporate-defined timelines?
• Do you have any pending corporate events that may affect the timeline?
• Have you worked in sick days, vacation days, statutory holidays etc.?
• Have you considered the accessibility of the people working on this project?
• Do you have control over resources?  Are you competing with anyone for access to those resources?
• What are the risk factors involved and have you set aside enough time to deal with these risks - and with unexpected risks?
• What is your contingency plan should the project fail to meet its deadline?

In today's corporate world, all projects seem to have a deadline of yesterday.  However, the reality is that timelines and schedules must be flexible and realistic to be accomplished. 

Key milestones

1. Project plan (milestones, resources, deliverables, timelines)
2. Identification of key stakeholders
3. Establishment of an advisory council and steering committee
4. Funding plan
5. Staffing and resource plan
6. Needs analysis
7. Implementation plan
8. Content plan
9. Engagement plan
10. Launch plan
11. Operations plan
12. Growth plan