{"id":21756,"date":"2016-01-15T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/key-successful-software-lifecycle-integration-deployments\/"},"modified":"2016-01-15T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T01:00:00","slug":"key-successful-software-lifecycle-integration-deployments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/key-successful-software-lifecycle-integration-deployments\/","title":{"rendered":"The Key To Successful Software Lifecycle Integration Deployments"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I experienced my first small earthquake (a 4.7 magnitude on the Richter scale<\/a>) in Vancouver, over the Christmas holiday. I didn’t even realize it was happening, since I was sleeping.  This got me thinking about planning, not only for my family’s safety, but also in general. <\/p>\n

As a developer, planning was key to the Agile processes that we followed to ensure that we had a realistic set of features and defects that could be completed in a defined sprint while meeting our overall release goals.  After moving to a solutions role, planning was mostly removed from my regular activities, as working with customers is more demand driven, especially when dealing with support requests.<\/p>\n

Over the past few months, the solutions department has been iterating on our “tried and true” process and defining it further to help customers get deployed faster and improve their time to value.  To us, a successful deployment is an installation and configuration running against production projects allowing the end users to gain value from integrating their systems.  Overall, we want the end users and administrators to be happy and see a benefit from the integration as quickly as possible. <\/p>\n

Our (unchanged) process consists of 4 steps: Assess, Design, Validate, and Launch<\/strong>.  <\/p>\n

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Following these 4 steps will ensure success and, if followed, can expedite the deployment process.  The developer in me always wants to jump to the Design and Launch stages, as that is where I can “tinker” with the software. However, I now realize that, I have always followed this process to some degree, because I know that it is not practical to interrupt the workflow of organizations with changes to infrastructure.<\/p>\n

As part of the Solutions team, I have worked with many customers through deployments and support issues. This experience has taught me that the most important phase in the deployment process is the Assess phase.  Upfront planning and preparation is key to a smooth production launch.<\/p>\n

When in this phase, the first thing you should do is get trained!  Training<\/a> is included with most of our deployments and it greatly helps your Tasktop Sync<\/a> administrators understand the technical details that help them implement the solution.  We also recommend that you ask yourself, and the other stakeholders involved, the following questions to help ensure a successful process:<\/p>\n