4.04. Managing a software deployment project

At some point in your strategy, it will be necessary to equip your organization with one or more software tools dedicated to audience data management. To effectively deploy such tools, it is essential to clearly define your needs and properly prepare the deployment within your teams.

In this guide, we draw inspiration from the methodological pages of the Ministry of Culture report "Deployment of Contact Relationship Management (CRM) Projects within Cultural Institutions," published in 2020 and available in the annexes. This method is fully applicable to all your software deployment projects.

The tool you are about to choose must enable you to achieve a specific objective aligned with a global strategy. That is why you will start by:

• Aligning the project with the institution's overall strategy
• Defining the marketing objectives and the expected benefits from using the selected software

The software must fit into the overall information system of your organization (emailing tool, ticketing software, etc.). You therefore need to consider the software within the context of your entire ecosystem:

• Identify potential impacts on the organization and professional practices
• Take into account other ongoing projects within the institution

Your new tool must also integrate with any constraints that may arise in the months and years following its implementation. Therefore, it is important to:

• Identify risks and constraints
• Assess technical, organizational, and budgetary risks
• Anticipate constraints and the regulatory framework applicable to data management (see the dedicated GDPR regulation sheet)

Before choosing and integrating new digital tools, it is essential to understand and document the IT environment in which the tool will need to fit, and to learn from previous tool deployments in order to avoid repeating past mistakes.

Therefore, ensure that you:

• Conduct an inventory of existing data and tools
• Collect extensive feedback from teams on previous IT projects
• Consult feedback and experiences from other cultural institutions

A successful project is one that has been given the necessary time to come to fruition, and that does not put teams in a position to fail. To achieve this, you should:

• Build a cautious and realistic timeline
• Allow for contingencies and unexpected delays
• Take into account the institution's seasonal constraints and heed any warnings or concerns expressed by the team

Like any major or structuring project for the organization, you must establish effective governance and full support from leadership to secure internal buy-in. To this end:

• Ensure the support of management and make it visible
• Involve the relevant teams from the start to align expectations (communication, ticketing, audience relations, general management)
• Identify "points of contact" or champions within each department to facilitate change
• Assemble a multidisciplinary project team
• Set up steering and monitoring committees
• Communicate regularly on project progress, as well as any delays or setbacks

Finally, it is common for organizations that have not clearly scoped their budget to be overwhelmed by the project. Therefore, from the outset:

• Prepare a comprehensive budget estimate that includes the costs of the current software (if redesigning) or the reasonable resources available for the new tool
• Include acquisition, implementation, maintenance, and development costs projected over the next two to three years, allowing for flexibility and software evolution
• Allocate funds for training and change management support, as a tool redesign project can be compromised without proper assistance in adapting to new practices related to the software change

The quality of a software overhaul or integration project partly depends on the quality of its functional documentation. It is therefore very important to strive to formalize your needs, desires, and ideas. This ensures a rich and qualitative functional dialogue with the shortlisted software vendors. For example, you can:

• Map current processes and target processes if you have already identified how they will evolve
• Analyze data flows and interactions between departments
• Identify opportunities for improvement and automation as comprehensively as possible
• Define the expected functionalities
• List essential and optional features
• Prioritize needs according to strategic objectives
• Define integration constraints with the existing information system
• Specify security and performance requirements
• Anticipate future developments to negotiate them in the vendor's roadmap
• Plan for the solution's scalability
• Write use cases to employ during the testing phase of the considered tools (this guide explains how to write use cases)

This formalization phase also helps prepare teams for the ongoing technological evolution. As part of gathering needs, you can organize collaborative workshops to collect expectations from each department and thus formalize a detailed specification document.  

It's time to make a choice!

This decision should be based on the performance of the shortlisted software solutions within the framework of the tender or public procurement. These performances will be assessed according to the use cases (see corresponding guide) and the specifications, possibly supplemented by an evaluation grid.

A decision validated as a team will be much easier to implement.  

  You have now chosen your solution, congratulations! Your goal at this stage is to prepare the deployment of the software in the best possible way. Your deployment will proceed in several stages:

• installation
• training
• testing
• and finally, going live

Don't forget to allocate a trial period to adjust the tool to real-world conditions. To do this, you will work with the software provider to:

• Configure testing and production environments
• Establish deployment and version management procedures
• Set up the solution
• Develop any necessary customizations to adapt the solution to the institution's specific needs
• Test the solution

At the same time, you will prepare data migration by:

• Cleaning, harmonizing, and structuring existing data
• Conducting migration tests to validate data quality
• Performing unit, integration, and load tests

In line with optimizing integration and effectively managing change, make sure to involve end users in all tests and preparations.

Together with the core project team, decide whether to opt for a phased or full deployment and whether to plan a period where the old and new systems run in parallel.  

  In this final phase of deployment, it is the human component more than the technical aspect that will determine the success of your project. Therefore, you should ensure to:

• Organize user training
• Identify different user profiles and their needs
• Plan training sessions tailored to each profile
• Provide appropriate documentation and continuously accessible support materials (guides, FAQs, assistance)

The first weeks of software use are critical for the solution's acceptance within your teams. This is why you must set up clear procedures for reporting issues and user feedback, pay close attention to them, respond accordingly, and communicate honestly about the deployment progress, including any setbacks if necessary.

• Define procedures for incident reporting and resolution
• Ensure local support during the initial weeks

At this stage, your software is deployed and the teams have adopted it.

But it's not over!

As a software solution must constantly evolve, it is important to review the results of the integration and to start discussing future developments, which you will have ideally negotiated during the call for tenders.