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Make no mistake: Implementing Dynamics 365 is a major undertaking with many moving parts. If your organization has never undertaken something of this scale, it’s natural to be anxious.
Fortunately, Microsoft and its partners have established a reliable framework called ‘Success by Design’ that will help you set realistic expectations—for your organization and yourself—and ensure you navigate this complex process effectively.
Microsoft’s “Success by Design” framework is its recommended, structured approach to Dynamics 365 implementations. It’s a collection of best practices distilled from thousands of real-world projects undertaken by its engineers and global partners, including Velosio.
The framework outlines key phases to work through and offers topic-specific guidance during each of them. It aims to help your team proactively address technical issues, ensure you don’t get stuck in the weeds, and stay aligned with your strategic business goals. The goal is to help you maximize your ROI in Dynamics 365.
In short, yes. There are, of course, other frameworks you can follow for software deployments. However, Success by Design is the preferred approach for products in the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft developed it for its partners because, after much trial and error and longer-term experience with their customers, they recognized that delivering a successful Dynamics 365 experience went beyond just building a feature-rich platform. They needed to understand the full lifecycle of implementing and using solutions in real-world business settings.
We’ve discussed the nuts and bolts steps of Dynamics 365 deployment before, but this framework is different. It’s not specific project tasks, it’s a structured set of phases with regular reviews baked in. So, it’s more to think about your project before, during and after.
This framework breaks down a Dynamics 365 implementation into five phases:
These phases aren’t tied to any specific project management methodology. Waterfall, Agile, or whatever your PMs use will work. However, Microsoft offers some specific guidance on PM methodologies in the context of Dynamics 365 implementations.
This initial phase is all about understanding your needs. The project team gathers business requirements from stakeholders, validates them, and uses them to build a high-level outline for how Dynamics 365 will work as a solution to those requirements.
You’ll also outline your approach to the implementation project. That should include defining your infrastructure strategy (how your systems will be set up) and your organizational strategy (how your teams will adapt to the new system).
Once you have a solid grasp of your goals and needs from the Strategize phase, you move into the Initiate phase. This phase kicks off with a Solution Blueprint Review, a formal assessment of your high-level design. Then you move on to defining all project workflows and updating your project plan accordingly for any changes you make.
Now, your team and your Microsoft partner will take your approved solution blueprint and begin making it a reality. This phase incorporates periodic Implementation Reviews, which provide a structured way to analyze progress on specific implementation aspects, such as data models, security, and integrations. More on these reviews is below.
The Implement phase ends when your Dynamics 365 platform is fully built and tested.
Next, you enter the Prepare phase, which involves finalizing user acceptance testing (UAT), training, and getting everything ready for a smooth launch. This includes securing customer approvals, completing information security reviews, mapping out your cutover process, and establishing clear go/no-go triggers.
Now that your solution is live, you’re in the Operate phase. As any experienced PM will tell you, you’re not done yet. The focus now shifts to stabilizing the platform and workflow, establishing continuous improvement practices, and, when ready, planning future growth.
As you may have noted above, Success by Design emphasizes reviewing—solution blueprint reviews, implementation reviews, and go-live readiness reviews. This framework wants you to take a methodical, reflective approach. Quick wins are important, but this framework emphasizes longer-term success.
Success by Design reviews usually involve more than checklists. They involve establishing regular communication, discovering unexpected issues early, and maintaining alignment within the project team.
Your reviews should always have outputs that are more than just documentation. You should be defining actionables. Review outputs primarily consist of two interconnected elements: Findings and Recommendations.
Findings
These are the key takeaways gleaned from analyzing your project artifacts during reviews. Try to categorize your findings as one of the three types to keep things structured:
These are suggestions stemming from your Findings. They outline specific actions your team can take to address Findings in all three categories. Together, they should provide a roadmap for keeping the project moving forward.
You need a strong foundation, no matter what you’re building: a house, a business, or a Dynamics 365 implementation. We here at Velosio believe the Success by Design framework gives you the strongest possible foundation for Dynamics 365 to generate value for your organization. If you and your Microsoft partner embrace the principles of Success by Design—its phased approach, insightful reviews, and actionable outputs—you equip your project team with the tools for navigating all project complexities.
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