- Making sure the system is seen as being owned by the institution, not the finance organization
- Avoiding "implementation shock" by keeping the community informed every step of the way
- Establishing an effective partnership with the IT organization, regardless of type of solution
- Establishing a clear plan, financial liability, and change control agreements in a partnership/consortium
- In a system development, testing the waters by developing in "chunks" or prototyping
- Establishing and meeting clear milestone dates
- Ensuring that key individuals remain involved throughout the implementation
- Clearly articulating where the accountability for the success of the project lies
- Ensuring that the project leadership stays balanced and that roles and responsibilities are clearly understood
- Being willing to compromise when necessary
- Understanding the importance of just-in-time training
- Dealing effectively with unforeseen changes or enhancements
- Operating the new system in parallel with existing systems
- Auditing data elements in key fields and supplying missing data
- Providing good technical support or training for technical staff
- Establishing completion criteria so that developers and integrators can be retained as long as needed
- Ensuring that technical competence is readily available in the cutover stage
- Ensuring that high-level, knowledgeable personnel conduct training
- Establishing a problem-tracking database
- Establishing a help desk with well-trained staff
- Using "early adopters" to test the system
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- Allowing "scope creep"
- Erosion of support after project completion in a peer-institution partnership
- Diverting resources before the implementation is complete
- Bringing "silver bullets" to the table in a partnership with other institutions, i.e., requiring too much customization in a consortium arrangement
- Allowing the functional or technical area to dominate the implementation process
- Long, drawn-out implementation that continually misses milestone dates
- Getting so concerned with data integrity that the cleanup doesn't get done
- Staffing the help desk with people who don't understand the "why," just the "how"
- Exercising too much caution in cutting over to the new system (it doesn't need to be perfect)
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