Start of the project of automation

In this article we will consider a number of questions which usually rise before the project orderer of automation in the course of approval of the agreement.

1. How time spent by the contractor for consultations of the customer is considered? Including, if they were conducted by phone or different ways …

First, it is worth selecting at once different stages of the project since at each stage different options of consultation and approaches to accounting of cost of such services are possible.

At a stage of commissioning and trial operation specialists of the company implementer advise customer representatives and execute additional completions, correct errors. All paid works including consultations with use of any means of communication (except for error correction), are considered in sheets of a time recording.

At a stage of commercial operation, the customer signs the agreement on subscriber services – technical support of a system. The first half a year after purchase of the software product, as a rule, this service is free, and further is paid for the price set by the developer. In general situations are very various.

Within works on technical support the issues arising at the customer in use of systems are resolved. For example, it can be answers to questions on potential program errors (i.e. the program issued unexpected results, and the customer does not understand from where they undertook) or, at an opportunity, the analysis of software failures in the provided database.

If the customer asks council for the solution in the system of certain specific tasks, then at an exit of volume of consultations for a reasonable framework (in question-answer style) the consultancy service agreement is usually signed with payment on an hourly basis.

2. Where subject responsibility of the contractor for result? There can be such situation at which the contractor imposed or proposed to the customer some solution, but upon completion of implementation it will turn out that the objectives of the enterprise are not achieved - a remaining balance is not right, the average daily tasks (ADT) are not exact, etc. Both low-quality implementation, and insufficient reasonableness at a stage of the functional modeling (FM) results in such results.

Business objectives of the project and the business process model "As will be" are defined at stage PSK and affirm the customer as the requirement specification. After determination of the purposes the contractor at stage PSK selects instruments of their achievement, methods of completion of a system and the applied models. Then this methodology is transferred to approval to the customer. And the Customer estimates adequacy of these offers on compliance to the purposes!

At a stage of trial operation the mistakes made by the parties come to light:

• From the customer new requirements to techniques, additional wishes of users come to light. All this completions are executed for a customer account
• From the contractor software failures and deviations of technical implementation from techniques come to light.

3. What is included into the test program? And if during tests it becomes clear that some standard functionality gives not absolutely expected effect which action did not blab out or it was not opened during PSK who will incur costs for completion?

The test program includes complete "pro-race" of business process according to the model accepted in terms of reference. At the same time the PSK purpose – to reveal need of completions. In the course of PSK the contractor first of all creates a business process model and also shows standard functionality and in details advises the customer on sales opportunities of business processes in this functionality, makes recommendations about completions. The customer analyzes results and accepts or does not accept the offered completions. Both parties bear responsibility for completeness of the analysis of mismatch, and it is impossible to separate formally this responsibility.

4. As a matter of fact at a stage of functional modeling the control example will be entered. But what if it is incomplete? Who will solve, who is wrong?

The program and acceptance criterions of a system affirm previously the customer. Respectively, the customer has an opportunity not to adopt the offered program if it does not correspond to his criteria. As the conclusion It should be noted that the project of automation and implementation of an end-to-end system of enterprise management is always the general child of the customer and contractor for whose success both parties bear responsibility. And only in case of consolidation of efforts and responsibility, the project waits for success.

Author: Podkhvatilina Maria Vladimirovna