Professional Services
Engagement Process
World Wide Packets’ Professional Services team has a proven Services Engagement Process that ensures each project it undertakes proceeds on track and on budget. Using clearly defined steps that identify project roles, deliverables and milestones, each project is managed according to key progress indicators and status reviews, as well as escalation mechanisms that enable the team to address any issues as they arise.
The Process is comprised of six core steps, including:
Assess. Before a customer engagement, the Professional Services team performs a Project Assessment, analyzing a client’s individual requirements from a technical, business, scheduling, and resource perspective to ensure that the solution World Wide Packets provides meets a customer’s specific needs. During this phase the team’s goal is to:
- Understand goals and business requirements
- Review and perform a Gap Analysis of technical resources
- Define a solution and list the primary deliverables
- Define project acceptance metrics
When the Project Assessment is completed, the team prepares and submits a Statement of Work to the client.
Plan. After the client has reviewed and accepted the Statement of Work, the Professional Services team begins working with client representatives to:
- Identify and assemble all technical and logistical resources
- Create a project team
- Establish roles and responsibilities
- Validate project scope and objectives
- Execute discovery processes to further define deliverables
- Finalize a project plan and determine duration of project
Once the plan has been finalized, it becomes the roadmap to project success as the Professional Services team conducts regular status updates and milestone reviews against plan deliverables.
Design. During the design phase, project deliverables are refined and technical specifications are finalized. The project team will:
- Create a custom Design Specification in which standard solutions are customized to meet customer requirements
- Define options for optimizing the existing infrastructure
- Create an Implementation Plan for the new solution and/or optimizations
- Define the Acceptance Criteria for specific deliverables
- Develop operations policies, processes and change management plans
- Develop a Transition Plan to transition services to the client team
Deliver. The delivery phase is the direct result of the planning and design phases and is the primary deliverable of any Professional Services engagement. During this phase the client’s team and the Professional Services team work together to become more than the sum of their parts. It is highlighted by the following activities:
- Implementing the Design Specification
- Monitoring milestones
- Integrating and optimizing legacy systems
- Establishing Services Assurance Checkpoints with operational and instrumented Test Procedures
- Customer acceptance of deliverables
- Knowledge transfer
Review. At the completion of the delivery phase, the Professional Services team conducts a review of the project to measure its success. During this phase the team will:
- Review the project history
- Deliver a Project Documentation Package
- Obtain Final Project Acceptance from client
- Obtain client feedback
- Provide a Project Documentation Package to World Wide Packets’ Customer Support for use with future support calls
Improve. The final phase of any Professional Services engagement is an internal Services Improvement Review in which internal teams review the completed project. During this phase the teams review customer feedback, unexpected issues and new solutions that have been developed on the project. This enables the team to constantly improve its procedures and technical solutions, as well as develop a series of best practices that can be applied to subsequent engagements.
