A major responsibility of the project team
was the conference room pilot. A cross-section of
products, processes, customers, and various scenarios
were created and tested. Several new processes
were evaluated and accepted or rejected.
One particularly rigorous test was a series of
complete order-to-cash process flows, where the
transaction values were manually calculated in
advance and the system results validated for accuracy
and completeness. The conference room
pilot was one place where the pressures of team
members daily responsibilities adversely impacted
the quality of the project. In those functional areas
that were represented by project team members
that had sufficient time available to explore alternate
process strategies during the conference room
pilot, significant improvements were generated.
But in those functional areas represented by team
members that had inadequate time to dedicate to
the pilot, the typical result was a substandard
replication of the old legacy system processes.