Part IV: Creating an Actionable Plan & How to Manage your Ongoing Requests
Whoa! You have done a lot with your inherited Salesforce org … but how do we get to the point that we are ready to action the change that you, your leadership, and your users have talked about as you have gone down this process.
Planning
After you have prioritized as a team what you want to work on, it is critical that you have a proper plan in place. No matter how large or small the initiative, I recommend following this process and having answers to the questions below for each initiative. It may seem like a lot, however, in my ten years of experience, most initiatives may fail, extend in the timeline, and change requirements without a proper plan in place.
- Find a central repository where you track your projects. Try to reuse what your company uses so there is consistency. You can manage this in a variety of different tools:
- Salesforce (AppExchange package for PMing)
- Project Management tool
- Trello
- JIRA
- Smartsheet
- Many other tools out there!
Ask the right questions prior to starting the work:
- Why are you taking this project on?
- Does it align with the goals you collected for the leadership and overall company?
- Does this require funding/approval?
- Is there a clear business use case for this project?
Understand what your success criteria is:
- What does success look like? Is everyone aligned with what success looks like?
- How will you measure your success? How often will your measure?
- Understand possible risks early and mitigate them.
Understanding the impact:
- What departments/functions/customers may be impacted by this project?
- What is the communication plan?
- How will you do this? I recommend drafting communication for your leaders to send out. helps with the overall adoption of the changes.
- Who is the audience?
- What should the frequency be?
- Will training or enablement be needed?
Understanding the Resources:
- What resources are needed?
- What is the timeline?
- Is there a budget needed for this initiative?
- Are there any super users that should be involved that can help train?
Executing
As you execute your initiatives, I recommend following a project management methodology. I am a fan of Agile but Waterfall works well too. Sometimes it just depends on what the initiate is.
- Always keep your project management repository up to date. If anyone needs an update, they don’t need to come to bother you for it and can self-serve.
- Keep sharing your progress with leadership. They will likely not care about the details but will care about roadblocks, risks, timeline, budget, and high-level status updates. I would recommend having a cadence of project check-ins with your stakeholders often (weekly).
- Keep your roles very clear on who is doing what and when. Implement daily stand-ups for quick updates and to discuss any blockers to keep the ball rolling.
- DOCUMENT the what, why, where, and when for historical tracking and change management.
Once you “go live” with an initiative, be sure to communicate, enable and celebrate it! When working with my sales and support teams, depending on the initiative, we would incentivize the change. I loved hosting “office hours”, which was the time I set aside to answer questions on the changes, get feedback and build more rapport with my users. Stay very close to them in times of major change.
- At the beginning of the process, you notated the way you would measure success. This sometimes is the lost leader in the project world. You spend all the time and energy rolling out some new enhancement, but don’t take the time to measure the success. This is a way to PROVE YOUR VALUE. This is also a way to learn what works and what did not work. A retrospective/post-mortem on your work will strengthen your career.
Iterating & Managing Moving Forward with Your Inherited Salesforce Org
It would be lovely if when we made enhancements to the system it stopped there. But your enhancements may require iterations or phases. I recommend following the intake process multiple times a year (I did this quarterly). The entire exercise sped up rapidly. You will notice your team getting used to the process and proactively providing
you valuable/actionable feedback.
Up Next: Congratulations! You are on your way to making considerable value with your inherited Salesforce org – I wish you all the luck! If you’re still having trouble unraveling your inherited Salesforce org. Feel free to reach out to us, we’d be happy to help!
Part I
Where to Start Understanding the Business & Identifying Processes
Part II
Part III
Prioritize and Strategize So You Can Properly Complete Your Assessment
Part IV
Let’s Create an Actionable Plan and a System to Manage Ongoing Requests
Candy Goll
Solution Architect
Unraveling challenges, overcoming obstacles, and exploring what's possible on the Salesforce platform.
Challenges on the platform are no hurdle for Candy, she clears hurdles on the Snowboard and on the Salesforce platform, like no other. Candy is your go-to Salesforce Solution Engineer. After inadvertently falling into the Salesforce ecosystem as an administrator, spending time at several consulting partners, and even working at Salesforce as a Solutions Engineer, she excels in solving large challenges. She is most commonly known for tackling complex situations and breaking them down into bite-sized pieces, to create a path to success. Candy is a Salesforce expert who thrives on partnering with companies to build scalable solutions by leveraging the Salesforce platform.
About Roycon
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