Roles of Team Members in Navision Implementation

mukesve

Hi All,

I am a Navision Consultant working on Navision product for last 3 years. In the last three years I have not changed my company so I am not able to analyze whether the implementation practice followed by the organization is correct or not as I have seen a few scrap implementation. Although the roles and responsibilities of a rookie, technical consultant, functional consultant and project manager are not well defined but there are many things which are considered to be as the company policy.

I would appreciate all the experts comments on the PRACTICAL roles and responsibilities of the team members of a Implementation team. First let me explain you the common practice in my company -

[1] Project Manager
A person who will look after more than 3 projects at a time. It is not necessary for him to have a strong knowledge of Navision. The only qualification required for this person is good communication skills. The following are the responsibility of the PM -
[1] Resource management
[2] Sending weekly report to the steering committee.
[3] Allocating work to resource
[4] Meetings

[2] Functional Consultant
A person, who has expertise only in General ledger not other modules. The qualification required is Chartered Accountant / MBA (Finance). Responsibilities -
[1] Setting up Chart of Accounts
[2] Giving Training on Country specific Taxation
[3] Importing Opening Balance
[4] Helping Technical consultant in Gapfit if required

[3] Technical Consultant
A person, who has the responsibility to implement the project successfully. This person will have the expertise on all the modules. The qualification required is Programming Certification in Navision.
Responsibilities -
[1] FRD Discussion / Gap Fit / Design
[2] Development
[3] Testing
[4] Training to end user for S&R, P&P, INV, Service Mgmt and CRM
[5] Support

[4] Rookies / Fresher
A person just completed his studies. This person is not very familiar with Navision product.
Responsibilities -
[1] Supporting Tech Consultant in Development
[2] Giving onsite Post-Golive support

Here I have experienced that there are few problems which results in the Implementation Failure at times.

[1] The technical consultant has more responsibilities than technical consultant. He should be involved only for Design, Development, Testing and Training for the customized module. This will allow him to focus on his domain and would encourage him to improve him skills in technical area otherwise he will be jack of all but master of none. He should be responbile to deliver a bug free customised solution.

[2] The functional consultant should be responsible for the Implementation and he should take the lead from FRD,Gapfit, Training and then post golive support.

[3] The project manager should be a Navision expert with atleast 4 year of experience in Navision. In small project he is not required as the Functional Consultant can fulfil that role. The project manager should review the gapfit and should be made equally responsible for the project success/failure.

[4] The rookies should not be sent onsite. The person deployed onsite should have atleast one year of experience on the product.

I have also listen one thing on so many times that - " Navision is not such a big product that it requires the module specialists. A single person can have the knowledge of all the modules". I would appriciate your valuable comments on the same.

Thanks and Regards
Mukesh

jungleboy

Hi,

First of all, let me stress that the candidate for PM should have more than 4 years of Navision experience. Otherwise he won't have the full control of the project. Most of the time issues that a PM tackle are requirements related, Navision architacture and implementation methodology issues.

Functional consultant should takecare a wide scope of Navision like distribution and warehouse module. The financial module doesn't really require a qualify accountant but rather a more comprehensive kind of finance and process person. This is to save resources and hanld the implementation more effectively. He also need to involve in gap-fit, training, design, testing and support.

As for the technical consultant, they need to involve in technical design, testing and 2nd level support. But most of the time they supporting multiple project at a time and tend to lost focus on a customisation.

Rookies are mainly doing the documentation, preparation for training and data migration.

By the way, whats your implementation methodology? Is it the same as what Navision propose?

ssingla

Dear Mukesh,

The structure of the team as narrated by you can not be a rule of thumb.
A sucessful implementation requires expert knowledge in all the modules to be implemented and the modules that will/can be implemented in future, both functional and technical.

As you will appreciate that Navision as a product is based on standard/generally accepted bussiness conventions/practices which are rarely in use in SME sector in our country.Therefore a lot of customizations requires to be done though the same is not advised by Microsoft.

To customize functional and technical having good exposure/experience in the modules are required.

Further it is very rarely seen/found that the skill set (technical/functional) can be bounded in modules in reference to their education/academic qualification. The only thing that needs to be considered is that you have a team which can satisfy the client requirement.

I totally disagree with your remark that the Project Manager should be concerned with the deliverables and not with the actual project initiatives/work/customization/configuration. No one is perfect and there needs to be hierarcy of validations for all works done by Navision consultant by the project manager.


Last but not the least , Expert knowledge is required in all modules no matter the product is small or meant for SME sector. I can remember my first full cycle implementation where I was PM having just 4 months experience in Navision and 3+ total experience. It was 10% luck referred by Black Tiger that got that project sucessful else now after 1 year I have realized what blunders I did and how I was unable to implement a lot of standard fucntionality which was dearly required by the client.

girish.joshi

The PM having experience in Navision comment seems to be generating a lot of heat.

I think everyone can agree that the more experience the team has with the product, pm included, the better off the team is.

That being said, of all team members, it is probably least crucial for the pm to have product experience.

What is important, and isn't mentioned in your schema, is someone involved in the planning of the details of an implementation, who is aware of the nitty gritty details of Navision implementation. This person obviously requires a lot of Navision experience, they had better be on the team, but they don't neccesarily need to be the PM.

In my opinion its better if this "core planner" isn't the PM, because the PM's communications duites are so intensive, and so critical to the commercial success of the project, that its best if they are left free to focus on communicating throughly and effectively.

girish.joshi

I basically agree with Black Tiger's breakdown, except I would turn his PM into two people: one focusing on diplomacy and team leadeership, and another focusing on what should be done globally.