What was your most rewarding project?

matttrax · 2010-06-28

I've been working somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 years to get my company reimplemented on NAV 2009. They are a 120+ user and pretty highly customized (400+ customized base objects and 3 custom functional areas). We finally finished today and go-live is tomorrow, the 28th.

I must say, a re-implementation is much harder than a new implementation. It's such a relief to be done and know that I have my company in a better place. Anyway, it got me to thinking, what has been your most rewarding project? Or what was your worst project that you couldn't wait to be done with? Share your best stories. And wish me luck tomorrow. I'll need a good read at the end of the day.

David_Singleton · 2010-06-28

matttrax wrote:

a re-implementation is much harder than a new implementation.

Its not actually. It just seems that way, because first time around you take short cuts and miss lots of things, have crazy expectations and really don't know what is needed.

The second tie you do it properly, which of course is why more work is involved.

Anyway congratulations.

einsTeIn.NET · 2010-06-28

I also think that it's only more work because you know much more about what you want to do and what you should consider in detail. If you had known many of those things before your first implementation would have taken more time. Some people say you should always redesign an implementation after a certain time, but nobody wants to pay for it.

So, today is the 28th. How is it going? We want some status report!

ara3n · 2010-06-28

I have done a couple of reimplementation and have found them to be easier.
For example the customer knows more of what they want exactly and what Mods worked and didn't work properly so reimplementing them is easier.
It could be the projects that those were easier, but I find them easier.

DenSter · 2010-06-28

I agree Rashed, re-implementations are easier because the people involved are better informed, and they make smarter decisions. Often it's a matter of "fixing the mistakes we made in the first implementation", and even "using out-of-the-box NAV" where customers realized that mods to make NAV act like their legacy system did not turn out as well as they had originally thought.

DenSter · 2010-06-28

As far as most rewarding project... For me it was an international project early in my NAV career that combined multiple localizations into one database, which had not been done before at that point in time. There are two reasons it was so rewarding. First, after a rough start (things got so bad that the customer almost pulled the plug), the customer and us turned the project around. Everyone realized we had a common goal, and we really became partners in what was a very complex implementation. Our ships sailed in the same direction, so to speak. Second, it was very rewarding from a technical point of view. We implemented a system that Navision (this was pre-MSFT) told us was not possible, with more users in more locations than was considered possible.

This project had everything, we started out making all the mistakes we could make, and we (the customer should get as much if not more of the credit here) turned it around and made all the right decisions. I still often think back about this project when I am faced with a difficult situation, and think "what would we have done to address this issue".

David_Singleton · 2010-06-28

DenSter wrote:

...was an international project early in my NAV career that combined multiple localizations into one database, which had not been done before at that point in time. ...

Are you sure? :whistle:

ara3n · 2010-06-28

That project would have been as easy as import objects if the objects in NAV could have the option to be Company specific.

Alex_Chow · 2010-06-28

The most rewarding project for me was my very first project creating a dataport to import the Chart of Accounts.

DenSter · 2010-06-28

David Singleton wrote:

DenSter wrote:

...was an international project early in my NAV career that combined multiple localizations into one database, which had not been done before at that point in time. ...

Are you sure? :whistle:

Well I guess it could be possible that when we had a number of conference calls with Navision, that they lied to us when they told us that this had never been done successfully before. We're not talking about putting UK and NL into one database, it was much more extensive than that.

matttrax · 2010-06-29

DenSter wrote:

I agree Rashed, re-implementations are easier because the people involved are better informed, and they make smarter decisions. Often it's a matter of "fixing the mistakes we made in the first implementation", and even "using out-of-the-box NAV" where customers realized that mods to make NAV act like their legacy system did not turn out as well as they had originally thought.

I wasn't involved in the first implementation, roughly 8 years ago. This was definitely a move back towards out of the box NAV. The problem was that there was no documentation on what the mods were and we started from scratch. No one at the company knew what was a mod and what was a base feature so they would constantly not bring something up because they assumed it would be there. To give you an idea of what they thought it would be good to do in the past....they completely stopped using the item ledger as a basis for their inventory. And that's just a start.

Anyway, it's busy as expected. Fixing the little things, but all in all not too bad. Only a hand full of real issues. Everything else is just dealing with the change. Still working 15 hours into the day, but about to go to bed. Then time to do it all again tomorrow. Thanks for the words of encouragement.

Alex_Chow · 2010-06-29

matttrax wrote:

I wasn't involved in the first implementation, roughly 8 years ago. This was definitely a move back towards out of the box NAV. The problem was that there was no documentation on what the mods were and we started from scratch. No one at the company knew what was a mod and what was a base feature so they would constantly not bring something up because they assumed it would be there. To give you an idea of what they thought it would be good to do in the past....they completely stopped using the item ledger as a basis for their inventory. And that's just a start.

I usually find documentation on modifications worthless. You can read hundreds of pages of modification documentation and still don't know what's going on. The only documentation that is helpful is in the codes, for upgrading purposes.

The best way to find out the changes made is to go to the source: the users actually using it. You would spend half the time and get much more accomplished.

David_Singleton · 2010-06-29

Alex Chow wrote:

matttrax wrote:

I wasn't involved in the first implementation, roughly 8 years ago. This was definitely a move back towards out of the box NAV. The problem was that there was no documentation on what the mods were and we started from scratch. No one at the company knew what was a mod and what was a base feature so they would constantly not bring something up because they assumed it would be there. To give you an idea of what they thought it would be good to do in the past....they completely stopped using the item ledger as a basis for their inventory. And that's just a start.

I usually find documentation on modifications worthless. You can read hundreds of pages of modification documentation and still don't know what's going on. The only documentation that is helpful is in the codes, for upgrading purposes.

The best way to find out the changes made is to go to the source: the users actually using it. You would spend half the time and get much more accomplished.

Agree 100%. =D>

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