Project Readiness

During the Discover phase, while prioritizing what to include in your Minimum Lovable Product (MLP), there are several other readiness activities you can do at the same time to ensure that your team is ready for the next phase, Prepare.

The Prepare phase is when the team gets together for the first time to kick off the project and design the solution (detailed design). Readiness ensures that everything is in place to make your project a success, such as having your development environments and project management tools set up. The Pega Express™ delivery approach provides a checklist for readiness.

The Readiness Checklist covers three categories: people, process, and technology.

• People – Make sure that you assemble the right project team to be successful, such as identifying a Product Owner, end-user representatives, and business testers. Refer to the Create your Resource Plan topic for more information on resourcing people for your project.
• Process – Ensure that you have collected information to run the Prepare phase smoothly, such as documenting the project vision, collecting samples of existing business processes, and identifying initial communication and change management plans. You will also want to conduct a Sales to delivery handoff meeting.
• Technology – Ensure that the environments, tools, and hardware sizing are complete. The following sections provide additional details on technical readiness.

You can download a complete list of prerequisite activities in the Readiness Checklist found on the Pega Express Delivery Resources page.

Complete each of the activities below before starting the Prepare phase so that the project team can focus on delivering the vision and outcome expected. Being technology-ready means that you mitigate any delays that can occur if, for example, the team lacks an environment to work on or necessary data required to start work is unavailable.

Technology considerations include:

• Confirming your hosting strategy (Pega Cloud, private cloud, on-premise) and required environments. If on-premise, determine how much lead time you need for hardware and software purchases. Reflect that in the project timeline
• Clarifying any non-functional requirements
• Identifying data migration needs and any data cleansing expectations
• Determining data sources, data services.
• Obtaining APIs for existing and new interfaces
• Setting provisional dates for any interfaces to be delivered, and document interface owners
• Agreeing on an initial test approach; typically, you use iterative Pega Express testing strategies
• Creating a technical dependency schedule that includes interfaces, infrastructure, and migration. This action determines which dependencies to prioritize due to longer lead times
• Confirming document sharing and project management tools (for example, Pega Agile Studio). Decide who procures and "owns" the tools. If you use Agile Studio, make sure that you specifically request that the Pega team provisions the tool
• Confirming the use of Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tools to automate steps in the software delivery process. If you plan to hire a Pega Deployment Manager, make sure that you specifically request the Pega team set up for CI/CD

The most important decisions at this stage of your project, Discover, involve confirming the hosting strategy and determining what environments the project needs. These decisions are some of the earliest that you must make because they impact downstream project planning and architectural decisions. Ask yourself:

• Will the environments be hosted on-premise, on Pega Cloud, or a private cloud?
• What is the lead-time required before the environments will be ready?

Answer these questions during Discover so that when Prepare starts, the team has software environments with which to work. The project team needs the development environment ready on day one and a test environment shortly afterward for hands-on in-sprint testing.

Once you determine the hosting strategy, you must estimate the size of the environments required. To do this, you gather nonfunctional requirements. These requirements provide you with inputs, such as:

• What are the expected case volumes?
• How many people will use the new application?
• Are there peak usage times?
• What response times do end-users expect?

Nonfunctional requirements can also include usability, accessibility, and security considerations. For example:

• Are there specific requirements for visually impaired users?
• Are there any remote access considerations that need to be taken into account if the environments are on-premise and some of the delivery team members are offshore?

Once you have collected the nonfunctional requirements, feed the information into your hardware sizing tool. Doing so calculates the size of the environment that is required to support the anticipated volumes and transactions that the new application processes. The nonfunctional requirements provide the project team with important information that can influence the application's design and enable the team to factor in work as part of their user story acceptance criteria. Sizing is covered in more detail in the User story readiness topic.

One of the three pillars of a Pega Platform application involves understanding what data the application needs.

You must:

• Identify any data migration needs and whether the existing data needs to be cleansed before  use
• Identify the data sources, determine the data services, and obtain APIs for existing and new interfaces to anticipate technical discussions during Prepare
• Obtain provisional dates for any interface deliverables and clarify the interface owners' responsibilities from the very start

Having tools in place before day one ensures that you can start the project on time. It is a best practice to set up these tools before the Prepare phase begins.

You must:

• Create a technical dependency schedule that includes interfaces, infrastructure, and migration. The schedule documents what dependencies require a long lead time and prioritization.
• Confirm how documents are shared, and which project management tools you use (for example, Pega Agile Studio). Identify who procures and manages the tools. (If you use Agile Studio on Pega Cloud, make sure you specifically request that the Pega team sets this up.)
• Confirm the use of CI/CD tools to automate steps in the software delivery process. If you plan to use Pega Deployment Manager^™, ask that the Pega team provision the tool.
• Agree on an initial test approach

The list is not exhaustive, as technology readiness varies from project to project. Refer to the Readiness Checklist on the Pega Express Delivery Resources page.

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