I recently stumbled upon the picture on the right on LinkedIn and it reminded me of a conversation that I had with my mother, who is an architect by trade. She told me that many roads came to be what they are today, not by well-thought-out plans, but rather by people and animals getting from point A to point B on dirt.
According to Encyclopedia.com, “the first rural roads were one-foot-wide paths traced by deer, buffalo, and other animals, or tamped down by Native Americans on foot.”
If you think about it, it sounds quite logical. Why guess the route people will likely take? Let them decide for themselves. Chances are they will take the shortest and most convenient route possible, providing them with the best possible experience. Wouldn’t you want to get it right the first time?
This “delay and play” (I just coined this myself!) concept can be applied to system implementations too. Often times, when we start the requirements gathering process with our clients, they tend to include a bunch of feature requests. It’s like their dream list. But, that’s not an ideal approach.
We typically suggest companies to implement the base version of a system and use it for a couple of months, in order to really determine the functionality they need and want. By using this best practice, we often find users take off old feature requests and replace them with new ones. This helps companies maximize the use of their system, enabling them to be more productive. And best of all, there can also be a significant cost savings by not implementing a dream lists all at once from the start.
On May 28, 2015, Param Singh, Perficient’s director of clinical trial management solutions, will deliver a webinar titled 3 Ways to Implement a Clinical Trial Management System. While the focus will be on CTMS, the approaches he’ll discuss can be applied to a variety of clinical and safety systems. We look forward to you joining us!
