Releasing software is scary
You're getting ready to roll out an exciting update to your company's 10 year old web-based application. You've convinced your management chain that these enhancements will vastly improve the user experience and make your call center reps much more productive. It's Saturday night, your dev team is on the conference call to support the install, and you're getting ready to click the "deploy" button. Just before you do, a thought rolls through your head as you contemplate the 523 commits, 6000 hours of development, and 2000 hours of QA time that went into this project.
What's Worst Thing That Could Happen?
Well, the worst thing that could happen is not what you think it is. It's not that the install process will have issues, you will have bugs, your users might not like the new screen layout, or that you'll look bad in front of your execs for a choppy install. Those things might happen, but they are not the worst thing.
The worst thing would be that with your new set of changes, the awesome new UI, and the super-modern architecture, you have altered, and possibly undermined business processes that your company has relied on for years. In fact, if you didn't do a thorough process mapping of any and all business processes that are impacted by your web application, you can almost guarantee it. And the reason this is the worst thing, is that it will lead to unknown issues with clients, internal stakeholders, Amy from accounting that can no longer do the reconciliation thing she does monthly using that feature and process that wasn't documented. The problems won't present themselves all at once, they will trickle in over the next three months as those dependent processes begin to break. It will be a dozen cringe moments, each one highly visible, rather than just one gut punch from a messy install. This is so much worse than bugs, it's lasting business impact.
Get a Good Map!
There is no 100% solution, but there are tried and true approaches supported by the right technology that can help you avoid this issue. Business process mapping is one of those approaches, and we highly recommend you use it. For more info on how business process mapping can help you avoid scary software deployments, check us out at Twisted Pair Labs.
Director of Information Technology at Commerce Bank
4 年This sounds similar to value stream mapping. About 6 months ago, I finished the book “Project to Product” which is where I really started investing more time in understanding how everything we do impacts the customer. Mapping it out allows you to understand this more (makes it visual) but also understand the value each change you make has for your customer. Any chance you have read this book?