Electric utilities are under increasing pressure to maintain the reliability and integrity of the electrical grid to ensure uninterrupted service to its consumers. With the increasing cost of performing many of its work activities with shrinking budgets utilities are having to do more with less. Efficiency has become their top priority. And as a result, these utilities are shifting their emphasis towards implementing intelligent software solutions to manage their day to day work activities.
Authoring a successful software implementation will not be without its challenges. But with the right planning, the appropriate involvement and input from your constituents/stakeholders and being proactive with testing and troubleshooting will lead to a successful solution that will be used by your teams. The SSP Sustainable Quality Methodology (SQM) is SSP’s proven model for large scale deployments and provides a mechanism for continuous improvement as we learn more on our deployment programs. Let’s dig into the details of this deployment strategy, for which we group typical activities the areas shown below:
Define Phase
The ‘Define’ phase is by far one of the most important. If you put in the effort up front it will save time, money, and effort later in the project. Begin with a vision. Think in broad terms of how you would like the solution to look, work, and function and then dig into details and specifics from there. What are the current pain points in your day to day operations and focus on improving those activities? What are your specific needs? Think about those needs and how they will fit into the overall structure of the solution.
As you define the outcomes of the project think about your workflows. Can your workflow be simplified? Where can efficiencies be gained? And although your workflows are entrenched by many parts of your organization from years of use, this is the time to rethink those workflows. There may be more efficient ways of performing the work. Often the greatest challenges revolve around silos of data and communication between different groups in your organization. Reducing these challenges should be core to your implementation. There may be some growing pains and a bit of a learning curve, but true efficiencies will be gained.
One thing to keep in mind while you define the scope of the project is, know your audience. Who will the user groups be and be sure to understand their needs? What tools and functionality will they need to be successful at their job? If you’re not making the job easier, they won’t use it and it will be wasted effort.
In moving to a digital software solution, another outcome to consider is to make the solution paperless wherever possible. Going paperless will not only save your organization money but going paperless is also an environmentally sound practice. Shifting to a digital process will make your data more accessible across your organization. Your data will not be filed away in a filing cabinet somewhere.
Focus on optimization and standardization. Again, in moving to a digital software solution optimization and standardization will come naturally. Through streamlined processes, dropdowns and picklists, standard forms, canned reports data will become standardized and workflows will become optimized. This is where the rubber meets the road in your software implementation.
It is also crucial to understand the technology. Know which tools are available that can be integrated into your workflows. By knowing which platforms are used you can leverage the ‘bring your own device’ model (i.e. iOS/Android) which can reduce much of the upfront cost burden.
Finally, develop a realistic project plan. Build in extra time to accommodate challenges that occur during the process. It should be a living/working document. Build in flexibility and provide ‘gates’ to allow adjustment of the schedule as needed. Building a custom solution will obviously require additional time and development and additional time will be needed for testing and troubleshooting, so identifying divergence from “OOTB” capabilities will be key, to ensure decisions to follow such a path are made carefully.
Design Phase
As you dig into the details, revisit the vision, the needs, and the workflows defined during the ‘Define’ phase.
Requirements: Generate requirements around functionality that is baked into the existing product (core-off-the-shelf functionality). Generate requirements around the essential functionality. This is functionality that is core to your business needs and must be incorporated into the solution. Generate requirements around custom functionality that will require additional time and development. You may want to examine the cost/benefit and revisit your needs.
Scalable: Make sure the solution can grow with the needs of your organization. Inevitably, your organization will grow, and the needs of your organization will change. Your user base will increase, and their needs will change as they use the functionality more and try to extend the solution to other use-cases and business needs. Your solution should be able to scale up to meet those needs.
Training: Devise a training strategy with the target roles and user groups in mind. Train your users based on their role in the organization and on which pieces of the workflow they are involved in. Supervisors and managers may need training on the full suite of products since they will need a comprehensive understanding of the process from end to end. Field crews are generally focused on one or two steps in the workflow. Generally, they use applications that are suited for field use which means they are streamlined, lightweight and well suited for harsh field conditions. They should have focused training with those specific applications. High level executives will need to be trained with the dashboards and reports since the typically only need to see high level progress, statuses, and metrics.
Develop Phase
As you shift to the ‘Develop’ phase make sure that you periodically revisit your vision, your needs, your workflows and the plan, where required. Periodically revisit these to ensure they have been satisfied. Don’t hesitate to keep the workflow simple. Over-complicating the workflow can introduce unnecessary challenges and hardship for the project team. Remember that each process will be securitized and will need to be validated during testing and may prolong the project schedule.
Break your implementation into smaller sprints or mini deployments. By doing so you simplify the deployment into smaller more manageable components. During each sprint you will follow a develop/deploy/test/resolve sequence. To kick off the sprint another component of the solution will be developed or configured. Per the schedule the solution will be deployed to end users and tested. Any issues or defects will be identified and resolved. This functionality will be deployed to the end users and tested again during the next sprint.
And most importantly, during each sprint you get the solution into the hands of the end user. Users become familiar with the deployment and installation process. Users become familiar with using the hardware. Users become familiar with the solution so they can provide meaningful/valuable feedback.
Obviously, during the development phase we will want to ensure that efficiencies are being gained wherever possible. However, we will want to be careful not to over-automate and/or build in to many dependencies or logic. This over-automation often leads to a loss in visibility into the process and into the back-end data for your users. And as a result, the solution will become cumbersome and will not be widely accepted by your users and your organization. Again, making the workflow and data flow simple and intuitive will guarantee user-friendliness and will make it more widely adopted across your organization.
Again, stay grounded. Before proceeding into the ‘Deploy’ phase ensure that your vision, needs, and workflows have been addressed. Reach out to all your constituents from your high-level stakeholders through your managers and supervisors to your work crews and field personnel to make sure all involved parties are satisfied with the outcome. If not, revisit those pieces of the solution and workflow.
Deploy Phase
The first steps of the ‘Deploy’ phase include rounds of testing, which typically includes System and User Acceptance Testing.. This period can last anywhere from a week to a month or more depending the complexity of the solution and the number of test cases. Because many of the issues/defects had been identified and repaired during the ‘Develop’ phase, user acceptance testing should progress smoothly and efficiently. Hopefully no surprises will arise. This is not to say that additional issues/problems will not be encountered. Resolve those issues accordingly.
Implement your training strategy to the intended audiences. It may make sense to initiate the training process with a ‘train the trainer’ approach. The initial training is given to a small number of pre-identified super users. Those super users in turn train the rest of the users within the organization. The super users become your internal subject matter experts and are your go to resource for troubleshooting and resolving issues down the road.
Typically going live with your solution should occur when most users are not using the system. And this typically occurs over the weekend. Tasks, resources, and expected duration for the task should be clearly defined. Resources need to know when they are expected to perform a task and backup/support resources should be on hand. Communication is key! If the cutover activities have been thought out and well planned, ‘Go Live’ should proceed quickly and smoothly and the solution will be ready and available to end-users come Monday morning.
Conclusion
In conclusion, authoring a successful deployment will have its challenges. But with the right planning, the appropriate involvement and input from your constituents and stakeholders and being proactive with testing and troubleshooting will lead to a successful solution that will be accepted by your teams and your organization. Follow the Define/Design/Develop/Deploy implementation strategy which is a proven model for large scale deployments. Efficiencies will be gained within your organization almost immediately.
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