Pinnacle's Deltek Open Plan Implementation Services

Deltek Open Plan can be implemented as a single-project scheduling tool, perhaps as part of an Earned Value Management System, or as part of a complete Enterprise Project Management application serving hundreds or thousands of projects and users.

For a project-scheduling focused implementation some of the questions you need to consider are:

• What type(s) of resource management are required? Do you need to use resource calendars?
• If you need visibility of resources across projects how will the resource pools be organized?
• Will templates be used for building project plans?
• How will baselines and change control be implemented?
• How will rolling wave schedules be implemented?
• Do you need consistency in the project WBS’s that are used?
• Is there any standard coding of projects, activities, or resources that is needed?

For the implementations with a broader focus the following questions will come into play:

• Open Plan’s scheduling engine is very sophisticated. Are your users ready to deal with the potential complexity? What type of training and support aids are needed?
• How will activities be statused each update cycle? Are you going to use WelcomHome for this or another mechanism?
• Will you represent all work in the organization in Open Plan? i.e. non-project work as well as project work? If so, how will non-project work be represented in the project scheduling application?
• How do user-roles map to the functionality of Open Plan?

Pinnacle’s implementation approach has been refined over many years on large and small engagements. Our approach emphasizes user-participation, is adaptable, and will guide you through the pros and cons of alternatives to each of the questions above.  The goal of our implementation approach is successful adoption of the new system.

Deploying software applications usually involves the following phases:

• Requirements/Architecture – agree the basic requirements and technical approach. Includes role definitions, user-scenario development and technical architecture.
• Prototyping/Configuration – building prototypes to support decision making
• Development – build any custom migration, integration or reporting that is required
• End to End Testing – test the applications from end to end
• Deployment, Documentation and Training– iteratively deploy functionality to the users

Learn more about our Deltek services.

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