Implementation Process

Implementation Process

Before starting the Project Implementation Phase, projects must have successfully completed the Project Evaluation Phase and the project has been approved for implementation. Project Evaluation Phase is a multi-step process of collecting, recording and organizing information about project results. Some of the reasons to conduct a project evaluation are to answer the question of accountability of the project, to demonstrate the effectiveness, efficiency of the project, identify the success factors, and need for improvement or where expected outcomes are unrealistic. Project Evaluation Phase is helpful in providing answers to key questions: What progress has been made? Were the desired outcomes achieved? Are there ways that project activities can be refined to achieve better outcomes? Do the project results justify the project inputs? The project evaluation could result in the defining of one or more projects to be implemented.

The main purpose of the Project Evaluation Phase is to transition to the Project Implementation Phase. This purpose of the Transition from Project Evaluation Phase to Project Implementation Phase task is to transition the project from the evaluation stage to the implementation stage. The implementation phase consists of developing and testing the system's software, documentation, and new operating procedures (Dennis, Wixom, & Roth, 2009). The implementation phase has timelines as well as milestones and should be identified, along with the target dates for achieving each milestone. Systems implementation and operation has seven major activities. These seven are coding, testing, installation, documentation, training, support and maintenance.

Coding is the process through which the physical design specifications created by the design team are turned into working computer code by the programming team (Valacich, George, & Hoffer, 2009). Coding is done when software developers take the design documents and development tools and start writing software. The longest phase in the product life cycle, developers have to write his/her own code and collaborate with other developers to make sure that different components can interoperate with each other. A revision control system such as CVS (Concurrent Versions System) is needed in this phase. The Concurrent Versions System (CVS), also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers (potentially widely separated in space and/or time) to collaborate. CVS became popular in the open source software world and is released under the GNU General Public License. There are a few other open source revision control systems as well as commercial