Operationalizing the DAP Project Lifecycle
Brief Overview
Whether your company prefers an agile or waterfall project management approach, defined phases or milestones with entry and exit criteria are critical. A standardized process to record critical technical and tactical aspects of the project allows the Center of Excellence (CoE) to deliver a consistent, repeatable experience.
Additionally, as your CoE works with stakeholders past the initial go-live on Projects 2-x, a standard project methodology will ensure up-front expectation-setting and accelerated time to value.
The DAP Project Lifecycle
For a deeper dive, enroll in the free WalkMe Program Manager I – Program Manager Essentials course in the Digital Adoption Institute.
Initiate
In this first phase, the project as a whole will be initiated. Once the intake form has been received, follow with an intake meeting. This allows the CoE to speak with the requestor to understand needs and requirements for the project. Here you may also develop a business objective and generate use cases.
Plan
The Project Lead will conduct opportunity discovery to understand the desired output followed by conducting solution discovery. During solution discovery you’ll spend time determining which solutions can fill current gaps. The last part of this phase includes determining key stakeholders for the project.
Execute & Lead
In this phase, you will be managing the DAP Team and their work to complete the project. This will require you to use skills and tools that allow for prioritization and delegation of tasks. It is also in this phase where you will see the biggest lift with risk mitigation.
Go-Live
We’ve initiated the project, completed development, and it is now time to prepare our solutions for publishing. In this phase, typically, you’ll assign stakeholders to troubleshooting, QA, and UAT testing roles. Once the solutions are packaged up and ready for deployment, they are then published.
Analyze
After a period of time passes where the solutions are in production, you’ll then begin to evaluate the success of the solutions. You’ll measure baseline metrics against solution performance and use this data to understand the value of what your project has created.
Optimize
WalkMe is not a set-it-and-forget-it solution. In this phase, focus on a data-driven approach to evaluating current implementations. Is the content getting the expected engagement? What do we need to adjust so the engagement can improve? Have any workflows changed since our last content edit? Have our business objectives and focuses changed?
Example Standard Operating Procedure for Project Stages
Phase | Entry Criteria | Activities During Phase | Exit Criteria | People Involved |
Initiate | Business stakeholder submits intake form |
Resource Allocation Intake form reviewed Project assigned priority in queue |
Kickoff meeting scheduled |
Program Manager Project Lead Business Stakeholders Business SMEs |
Plan | Kickoff meeting |
Establish Roles & Responsibilities Discovery via Goal Cascading Configuration plan Segmentation plan Deployment plan Data Strategy plan Content delivery scope |
Solution Design Sign off |
Project Lead Builder Data Analyst Architect Business Stakeholders Business SMEs |
Execute | Solution Design Sign off |
Content Creation Testing Quality Assurance UAT Value & Reporting Alignment DAI Certifications & Building Resource Efficiency Go-Live Checklist |
Publishing content to Production environment |
Project Lead Builder Data Analyst Designer Architect Business Stakeholders Business SMEs |
Go-Live | Publishing content to Production environment |
Confirm Value One Confirm accurate Reporting & Data Confirm Report Subscriptions Setup Hypercare |
Hypercare completed Project Debrief meeting scheduled |
Project Lead Builder Champion Business Stakeholders |
Analyze | Project Debrief meeting completed | Insights Review Business data reporting/data review | Data collection to drive required adjustments |
Project Lead Builder Data Analyst Business Stakeholders Business SMEs |
Optimize | Data collection (via raw data or reports) to drive required adjustments |
Scope optimization requirements Plan for maintenance needs via upcoming platform releases Adjust content to optimize |
N/A – This is an ongoing phase |
Program Manager Project Lead Builder Data Analyst Designer Champion Architect Business Stakeholders Business SMEs |