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Showing posts from March, 2020

Building a Team for a Dynamics 365 (formerly CRM) Implementation

by James Townsend For most organizations, implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) is a team effort.  The size and composition of the team will depend on the scope of the implementation, the timetable, and related efforts such as data migration and integrations. Here are the roles that my company InfoStrat typically sees for a medium-sized implementation project: Project Manager . The PM and the technical lead are the most critical roles on the project.  A large project may also include a deputy project manager to cover when the PM is not available.  Prior experience with Dynamics 365 is valuable to understand how an off-the-shelf implementation is different from a custom software development project.  Most of our projects follow an Agile development methodology, so this post assumes Agile in describing the roles of the team members.   Technical Lead .  The tech lead is the senior technical team member and provides technical direction to the team.  Prior Dyn

Elaborating Dynamics 365 Requirements

by James Townsend When implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM), one of the early steps in the process is to elaborate requirements so they can be mapped to Dynamics features or to configurations or customizations needed to fulfill the requirements. Many customer requirements start off as rather vague, and require further investigation before they can be the solid basis of the project.  Let's take a look at some CRM requirements and how to explore them. Requirement: Ability to identify and assign roles to office staff members Analysis Questions Who are the users of the system? What user roles will be needed? Should all users of the same user role have the same access to all records? Or does access depend on the organizational hierarchy or record ownership? Who will administer your Dynamics users? What about external users?  Is this covered in another requirement? Requirement: Track all customers Analysis Questions Who are customers?  Individ