Planning the installation of Lotus Domino/Notes in an AS/400 environment is similar to planning any strategic project for your business. The obvious goal is to successfully implement a new business solution. In the case of groupware, however, the success or failure of the project will ultimately be determined by the users—whether a data entry clerk or senior manager—regardless of the technical merits of the system itself. Of course, poor planning and management can doom any project, but the lack of a clear understanding of the business requirements or lack of support on any level can also derail the installation of Domino/Notes. Before starting such a project, you must have a clear understanding of the business problems, needs, or opportunities you want to address with Domino/Notes. Considering today’s business environment, you might want to use Domino/Notes for a variety of Web-based solutions, such as the following:

• Marketing and sales

• Customer service

• Web-based supply chains

• External and mobile messaging and mail

On the other hand, you may want to start with a strictly internal groupware solution using Notes’ traditional messaging, mail, calendaring, and work flow capabilities. One of the main characteristics of Domino/Notes is its chameleonlike ability to change its functionality due to the mix of demands placed on it. Always keep in mind that most IT projects fail because of poor project planning/management, lack of resources and support from upper management, or changing goals in midstream—not because of the technological limitations of the product itself.

Commitment Is the Key

The success of a project such as implementing Domino/Notes requires a clear chain of command. There are two key roles here: the project sponsor and the project manager. The project sponsor is the captain of the ship, charting the corporate journey. The project manager should be in charge of planning the details and implementing the project. Because corporate politics always come into play in a project of this nature, the involvement of the CEO or a senior VP (as the project sponsor) will indicate a better chance of success than if the plan involves only project-manager-level employees. The project charter, which should detail your corporate commitment to this project, should come from the highest levels of management even if the CEO isn’t directly involved in planning details. Because Domino/Notes has the potential to significantly change your company’s corporate culture, the project charter should be an official document detailing the project and its business goals.

Recruiting the best senior executive sponsor may be a challenge due to time constraints, but one executive should assume complete control of the project. Having the CEO express personal interest in an undertaking always increases access to the resources needed to complete the project on time and on—or under—budget. Because the project structure will be spread across many levels of management, clear communication between the project manager and those both above and below in the organization is essential.

The project is, by nature, date-driven from start to finish, so you must determine whether the project will be driven by the start date or by the completion date and understand the business factors used in deciding this element of the project. Dates that control the project schedule, cost, and specifications can control the ultimate success or failure of the entire project. These include the following:

• Start date

• Test dates

• Migration date

• Cutoff date for old procedures

While dates are important, the success of installing Domino/Notes usually requires more discipline than the rote methodology of deadlines, so try to start educating staff in the ways that this new kind of software can help them as soon as possible. Resistance to any new software usually comes from ignorance and fear of change rather than the functionality of the product. If you can gain employee acceptance of a major software change, you’ll have allies rather than enemies even if there are minor glitches during the conversion.

Make Sure Your Scope Is on Target

Because Domino/Notes is such a multifaceted and malleable product, you must have a clear view of what the scope of your particular installation of this software will encompass. Domino/Notes includes application development modules, mail/messaging/calendaring, mobile computing, and a robust variety of e-business capabilities. Your project plan must separate out the Domino/Notes processes that will or will not be used in your particular enterprise. For instance, if Domino/Notes is going to be your e-commerce solution, you’ll need to focus on Web-based development, but, if your goal is to use enterprisewide computing functions (tools and techniques used throughout the entire organization), you might want to concentrate on messaging, mail, and cooperative techniques. You should also plan the geographical scope of the project. (Will it extend to different physical locations?) Finally, you must decide exactly which Domino/Notes functions you will initiate first, which levels of personnel will be involved, and the training they’ll need to make effective use of the new software. Education is essential when installing any new

software package, and Domino/Notes demands special attention to training employees because of its essential differences from traditional transaction-driven software. If your users have a clear understanding of the reasons you’re installing this new groupware package, then generic training that addresses how to use the functions and features of Notes may be sufficient. If, however, your employees are unsure why you’re installing this new breed of software into their already-complex IT world, then structured training that addresses not only the functions and features but also specific business applications may be needed. Each organization will have different educational needs, but any thought of scrimping on education to save time will backfire and create problems at the project’s end phase.

Resources: Money and Manpower

Any successful project relies on adequate resources. Funding and staffing are the two most precious resources in any IT project, and planning a Domino/Notes installation is no exception. As previously mentioned, having the solid support of upper management, especially of the CEO, can help with fiscal necessities. A well-written project charter that clearly outlines the project’s business objectives and the ensuing ROI will go a long way in obtaining adequate funding from those tight-fisted accountants. An under-funded project is like trying to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat. You might make it, but, by the time you get there, you probably won’t be in any shape to enjoy the scenery. The same goes for the project personnel. There are staff members at many different levels of expertise needed in a Domino/Notes implementation project. Some, like the project sponsor, managers, and technical workers, are quite obvious. Others, especially those who deal with e-commerce, are not so well-defined. In many cases, you may need to retrain workers or hire new employees to fill such positions as the following:

• Webmasters

• Content authors and providers

• Graphic designers

• HTML, Extensible Markup Language (XML), and LotusScript authors

• Java, JavaScript, or Java-anything experts

The project team will obviously reflect a large variety of assets. Therefore, the goals set for each development group will vary. Target dates and levels of functionality should be assigned that reflect both tangible and intangible benefits. For instance, getting Domino and a few Notes test clients up and running is a tangible goal, while understanding the matrix of true knowledge management (KM) and cooperative processing may be intangible, but just as valuable. Communication among all members of the team is vital to the success of the project, so the politics that originally led to the project should be distanced from its actual implementation. Of course, that’s assuming that you have followed the previous steps and obtained adequate funding and manpower. If not, I suspect that politics could spoil the whole thing.

Success or Failure: The Ultimate Measurement

In order to assess the success or failure of your Domino/Notes installation project, you must have a litmus test ready. That means you must have used the rules we have laid out to determine both the tangible and intangible measures of success as detailed in the project charter. From the start date through the cutoff date, many detailed steps have been performed to install, design, and test your Domino/Notes implementation. Now that you

finally have a real, live Domino/Notes environment up and running, you must delicately measure the results of your carefully laid plans. We’ve tried to show you the right way to plan for installing Lotus Domino/Notes. Now, let’s take a look at the risks involved in trying to design, manage, and complete a project of this size.

If you can’t get an executive sponsor explicitly committed to the project, you’re running on low-octane gas and probably won’t reach your destination. Having no formal planning process, or worse, no written project plan, is like taking iodine with your tea. Unless you have a structured project management team with clearly identified strategies for implementing groupware technologies and adequate personnel and fiscal resources, you risk building a very pretty boat that has holes in the bottom. Finally, if you do an admirable job in completing the project on time and on budget but there were no obvious and compelling business reasons to build the boat, it may float quite well but steer itself aimlessly in a sea of IT knowledge.

While the risks of planning and installing Domino/Notes are not small, the potential benefits are well worth it. If you use a game plan like that detailed in this article, the chances of successfully completing your Domino/Notes project will be significantly enhanced. Evaluating the success of the project involves both the subtle as well as the overt qualities of success. Some of the obvious questions to ask are the following:

• Has implementing groupware energized your corporate computing culture?

• Are you seeing real savings in time and money using Domino/Notes?

• Is productivity up, especially in terms of customer and/or user satisfaction?

• Is this new kind of software producing better communication and collaboration in your company?

• Are the company executives using Domino/Notes to better understand their business and save time in the process? (The answer to this question may determine the implementation of future Domino-related projects).

The success of the project planning and installation of Domino/Notes is more difficult to gauge than the usual software installation plan. As noted, groupware, by its very nature, involves both tangible and intangible assets, as well as goals such as maximizing knowledge identification and sharing. These targets, as well as encouraging collaborative computing and creating an e-commerce environment, aren’t as clear-cut as installing a general ledger software package. But a cohesive and detailed installation plan combined with the input and support needed from top management can make this task well worth the effort in terms of knowledge creation, increased production, and a higher ROI.

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