We just recently completed the launch of a feature rich and highly complex calendar system for our largest client, United Jewish Communities. The project accomplished a number of technical and functional goals, and was also our largest of the year (well, it was the largest project for my client and since I only pay attention to what my client does, it might have actually been the largest of the year).  But, this post is not specifically about the project, but the new processes we introduced into this project lifecycle that I think have proven extremely beneficial to project team, client and end users.

Functionality Review Sessions – In an effort to improve our quality assurance and involve more of our QA team before the development completes and moves onto the testing site, we held functionality review meetings that involved the Project Manager (me), the Director of Technology, the programming team and a member of the QA team. This was in addition to the regular status meetings, and the goal of these meetings was to review the functionality developed to date and confirm that it met the requirements and worked properly with the other parts of the system. Each programmer would demonstrate what he/she had worked on and issues would be detected early at a stage when they would be more easily corrected.

This idea of the cost of early vs. late detection is demonstrated very well by this graph created by Contrux software.

(More on this concept in another post).

BETA Sites & Launch – About a month before the launch to the live websites, we went into BETA mode (not new to many in the software world, but something our group has wanted to do for a while). We created mirror versions of the 160+ websites that are using our CMS and calendar, and gave them a place where they could try out the new functionality and view their events in the new calendar system. This accomplished two goals:

• It gave the users time to become comfortable with the new system before it was ‘thrown’ upon them. One of the most challenging things about the tool that we develop for United Jewish Communities is that it needs to be user friendly to both the tech savvy and the tech un-savvy at the same time. In our last large release, there was criticism from the field that we did not give the users an opportunity to try out the new system before it was thrust upon them. We took that criticism seriously and wanted to make some changes.
  
  
• It opened up the new work to several hundred more pairs of eyes, giving us and them more of an ability to catch defects that could be specific to one website or one specific arrangement, system, etc.

Training – we also conducted web & phone training sessions for over one hundred users, spread out over 8 sessions. The users were able to train on their own BETA sites and could ask questions early and address any concerns before the launch to the live sites took place. This was also a great forum to share ideas about how to make best use of the new calendar functionality.

All of this did a great deal to improve our quality assurance and control processes and the client and end-user acceptance of the product.

Did the project launch 100% bug-free?

Not exactly. I mean, let’s be realistic here. This is the world of software after all.

Did we have any real show-stopping issues when we launched, either delaying the launch or making for rough sailing for the post launch days and weeks?

Not really. There have been bugs that both our team and the end users have found since launch that were not detected before, but we have been handling them carefully and efficiently and the system has remained stable throughout this process.

Do we have happy customers?

I think so, there seems to be a good feeling in general and we're starting to see some nice creative use of the new system and good ideas going around for how to make the best of the new tool.

I’m happy and relieved that the project has launched and completed smoothly, and excited about the progress that was made both technologically and in various project management process areas. I look forward to continuing to incorporate these processes and finding new ones that will make future projects even more successful.