IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

5.8. Delivery and implementation

Once a software solution has been appropriately tested (a subject in its own right and beyond the scope of this book) and validated as meeting business expectations, IT delivers and implements it. This means installing, activating and initialising it with live data. In parallel, users are trained and afterwards 'go live' on the system, which is now in production. Later on, once processes have matured and the application has stabilized, jointly agreed service levels can be put in place via an SLA, or service level agreement.

Implementing software is a fairly predictable phase with clearly defined 'no surprises' tasks whose success is dependent on a combination of user buy-in, a working product that does what it's supposed to do, appropriate training in terms of duration and content and finally basic project management.