Getting Sign-Off

For a system to be considered successful, it has to provide a solution that stakeholders agree meets their needs. Keeping your stakeholders informed and aligned and managing their expectations throughout the implementation is essential for success.

In this chapter, you will learn how you can use sign-off checkpoints to keep stakeholder’s understanding and expectations aligned through the different phases of your implementation.

The value and mechanics of sign-off are generally not talked about. Those who are unfamiliar don’t appreciate the importance, meaning project milestones can come and go without formal (or only a passing) acknowledgment from those who are involved. They have a personal view of how the implementation is progressing, which is not challenged. This topic has a dedicated chapter to help you understand why sign-offs play an important part in ensuring the success of your Sales Cloud implementation.

We’re going to cover...

Supporting tools and information

Sign-off is a business process. Organizations need to document the sign-off process so that there is readily available evidence in case the need arises. A method of documenting sign-off is needed so evidence can be provided in the future if required. These are all typically available in business for other activities. Use the tools available to you. There is no need for a specialized tool for this purpose.

The what, why, who, how, and when of sign-off

In this section, we will look at the anatomy of sign-off: in practice, what does it mean, why is it important, who needs to be involved, how does it happen in reality, and when do we include the different types?

If your organization has a framework for signing off projects or system development work, it is important that you understand that framework and follow it, unless you have specific reasons to take an alternative approach. The content here is for those who don’t have an existing framework or want to know more about sign-off on typical Sales Cloud implementations. We will refer to the work as the implementation rather than as a project, which is a much broader term.

Sign-off can be an ambiguous term that people are expected to understand but is rarely explained. That is why we break it down in this chapter.

First, we need to learn what sign-off means.

What is a sign-off?

A sign-off is a business process. The...

Types of sign-off

In this section, we explore what each of the following types of sign-off represents, the typical deliverables included, who is usually involved, and when this type of sign-off is included. Figure 7.2 shows the phases of an implementation and where sign-off milestones occur:

Figure 7.2 – Implementation phases with sign-off milestones

From the diagram, you can see that sign-off usually happens when one phase ends and before the next starts; however, testing activities can occur before the build phase is signed off.

We will start by exploring Discovery sign-off.

Discovery sign-off

A discovery is a piece of work that investigates and documents the as-is situation in a business, typically including an assessment of its systems. It allows for the gap between where they are and where they want to be to be more accurately understood. This is commonly carried out when an external supplier is building the solution, as they do not...

Summary

In this chapter, we have learned what is meant by sign-off, why it is important for ensuring that stakeholder’s expectations are kept in alignment, who is involved, and how it happens. We have learned that there are different types of sign-off and that a formal version is not required for all implementations. However, it is recommended that they are all included when Sales Cloud is implemented for the first time or when work is delivered by an external supplier. When all the types of sign-off are not included, it is still essential to include the scope and final implementation sign-offs, and if a formal sign-off is not planned for any of the milestones, it is recommended that an informal check-in be carried out with the key stakeholders to confirm their expectations are still aligned, and their sentiment is positive.

In the next chapter, we expand on the testing approach that we introduced in Chapter 2, Preparing for Success. You will learn how to execute testing...