Best Practices Problem Avoidance (#53)
/In this podcast episode, we talk about the various techniques that can be employed to improve your odds of installing best practices. Key points made are:
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Determine who manages the process to be changed. Could be trouble if you are impacting the area of responsibility of another manager. If so, try some other best practice.
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You may not be in the right; review the issues of other parties to see if their concerns about a best practice are valid.
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If you have not installed a best practice before, obtain lots of advice before proceeding.
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Space out installations, so that the department has a chance to settle down in between major changes.
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Slice up large projects into smaller pieces, so that some items can go live sooner. Improves the odds of overall success.
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In-house capacity impacts your ability to complete installs; need to free up staff time.
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Each successive project frees up more staff time, making it easier to work on the next project.
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Review projects for dependencies, and verify in advance that you can work through them.
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Verify that a new best practice integrates into the corporate system of controls.
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Stick with off-the-shelf software; it rarely makes sense to develop a customized solution.
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Maintain a full list of best practices to work on, so that you can easily switch over if there is a problem with the current project.
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Chat with other managers periodically to see if any of them are interested in a best practice.