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Planning your EAM/CMMS project

You've all heard it before - "What you don't plan, you don't achieve". But that's not the real issue. The real issue is how do you decide the right level of planning - somewhere between the back of an envelope and a planning freak's delight.

At the minimum you need to have a task list - showing what, when, who and what cost. Putting it into a planning tool like Microsoft Project sure helps, but it's not essential. One very useful way it will help is to show the dependencies - what has to be done in which order.

So what do you plan? Most implementation project managers adopt the plans proposed by their selected vendor. Nothing wrong with that as long as it matches what you want to do. But remember that they cannot know your business dynamics as well as you do. So use their plan as a starting point and modify it to fit your needs - which usually means adding things they don't normally include.

Most EAM/CMMS planners subdivide the tasks into manageable sections such as:

Project Management - project definition and objectives, project planning, staffing and resources, project control and on-going performance tracking
Technical - hardware and software requirements, system design, configuration, development, integration, report-writing, pilot testing and go-live
Business Process Improvement - tailoring the way you do business to maximize the value from the implementation of the software tool
Education and Training - core team, management and users
Implementation Support - Help Desk, on-going problem solving, user group participation

Fleshing this out into a comprehensive list requires a level of detail and depth of experience that few maintenance managers are fortunate enough to have. But don't let that undermine your probability of success; paying close attention to the services associated with the software will pay off in spades!

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