Would like to suggest one additional practice which I have always found very useful. In the blue printing phase, what some may call the business study phase, when u go about understanding the business process flow and when u ask questions to different client stakeholders, please collect the following documents/reports:
- What comes to a particular guy
- His working papers if any
- What goes out of his desk
I have personally found this to be very very effective. You see if u analyze each and every data point in any document it helps u make a clearer mental map of the business process flow. If your final blueprint can explain all these information points then ok otherwise u can be sure u have missed out something!
There can be many reasons why sometimes info is not captured properly in the blue print documents. Many a times these documents hold much hidden information and data points which may or may not come up during a discussion but may make or break your implementation.
Probably as a consultant u already do what I suggest as a routine...kind of in an unconscious way...so hopefully reading this post will just make u stop and have a more conscious look at this activity...!!!
