6 Steps to Successfully Managing Your

Microsoft Dynamics Environment

Presented by:

Kylie Keyzer, Wells Fargo

Introduction

• Kylie Keyzer

• Product manager on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 implementation for Wells Fargo Bank's Treasury Management group

• Started on CRM 4.0 implementation in 2010

• Certified on CRM 2011 in 2013

• Wells Fargo snapshot

• Helping customers succeed financially for 163 years

• 70 million customers, serving one in three households in the US

• Treasury Management is part of the Wholesale Banking division

Questions

• Having trouble securing resources for CRM development projects?

• Does your CRM environment have control issues?

• too many changes breaking processes

• pace of change too slow

• Is the relationship with your development team strained due to lack

of trust?

• What if you had techniques to more effectively manage your CRM

environment?

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Steps to manage your CRM environment

1. Develop a strategic roadmap

2. Plan ahead to balance control and flexibility

3. Create a development backlog

4. Prioritize and groom the backlog

5. Plan a release

6. Communicate changes to users

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1. Develop a strategic roadmap

• High level priorities for CRM for next 12-18 months

• Sets milestones for the team

• Baseline to measure against

• Use for resource planning and budgeting

• Helps align with integration partners

5

http://femgineer.com/2012/10/3-reasons-you-need-a-product-roadmap/

2. Plan ahead to balance control and flexibility

• Which changes require a release?

• Release = customization publish or

backend code change

• Manage risks

• Impacts downstream partners

• Involves integration with other

applications

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System Administrator

System Customizer

Business Admin/

Super User

User

2. Plan ahead to balance control and flexibility

• Which changes can business admins make

on the fly?

• Data changes (i.e. lookups) rather than

option sets

• Configurations entity for variables

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System Administrator

System Customizer

Business Admin/

Super User

User

2. Plan ahead to balance control and flexibility

• Examples

• Lookups: Campaign types, Goal types, Opportunity lost reasons

• Opportunity form rules based on product catalog flags

• Employee role mappings based on Job Code to Role mapping entity

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Steps to manage your CRM environment

1. Develop a strategic roadmap

2. Plan ahead to balance control and flexibility

3. Create a development backlog

4. Prioritize and groom the backlog

5. Plan a release

6. Communicate changes to users

9

http://www.versionone.com/agile-101/agile-development-methodologies-scrum-kanban-lean-xp/

3. Create a development backlog

• All changes requiring development

• Large roadmap items (needs, vague requirements initially)

• Small enhancements (task-y)

• Defects

• Tools:

• Excel/Google Docs

• VersionOne

• JIRA

• Rally Software

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picklist option

System of record

integration

CRM 2015

Upgrade

New account

fields

Defect fix

Defect fix

Case rules

4. Prioritize and groom the backlog

• Highest priority items to the top.

• Rocks and sand prioritized together.

Releases need a balance of both.

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3

5. Plan a release

• Select candidates for the release based on priority

• Team reviews all release candidates in detail

together (aka Story Jam)

12

System of

record interfac

e

New account

fields

Defect fix

Case rules

• Development calculates resource capacity for the

release

• Development provides estimates for each release

candidate

• Business “shops” from the list of release candidates,

spending the capacity

5. Plan a release – Capacity planning

• # of developers x days per iteration less PTO

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• Utilization factor

• For shared resources

• Production support time

• Unknown factor

• Assumption that

requirements will change

as unknowns are realized

5. Plan a release – Scope Determination

• Estimates by resource type

• Items included as capacity permits

• Change requests required:

• To add items to the iteration after scope

locked

• Requirement changes which require

more dev time than initial estimate

• With each iteration, estimates improve.

Retrospectives help.

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6. Communicate changes to users

• Release email

• Briefly describe key changes with small screenshots

• Training calls

• 1 hour conference calls offered several times over the week

• Quick demos for new enhancements

• Reference guides and online demos

• 1-2 page functional quick reference guides (e.g. Navigation guide,

Advanced Find, Managing calls and tasks)

• 1 min Captivate online demos

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Steps to manage your CRM environment

1. Develop a strategic roadmap

2. Plan ahead to balance control and flexibility

3. Create a development backlog

4. Prioritize and groom the backlog

5. Plan a release

6. Communicate changes to users

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