What is The Anaplan Way?
The Anaplan Way (TAW) is our tried and true project management methodology that has proven successful over hundreds of project implementations and across lines of business and industries. This methodology ensures a successful deployment of the Anaplan platform, delivers transparency during each phase of an implementation to keep the project on track, and positions the platform for strong user adoption. It is designed to be flexible and dynamic, allowing for the twists and turns that a project may face!
Many Anaplan customers do 3–4 releases of Anaplan within a year, each release building on the existing implementation and iterating additional bells and whistles along the way. When scoping out your Anaplan project, a best practice is to lay the foundation in the first phase and then use future phases to integrate more complex business requirements. This will help with user adoption as end users and model builders become more skilled with Anaplan and its capabilities.
We've created a guide for customers who want to know more about The Anaplan Way:
The Anaplan Way for Customers.
Anyone interested in completing their Model Building Certification must complete The Anaplan Way on-demand training in the Learning Center.
Keys to Successfully Applying TAW
- Set a strong foundation
- Have clear and accurate information to lay the foundation and avoid confusion along the way. This information includes the manifesto (your goal), your business process, and your data.
- Create a change management and training plan at the beginning of the project, extending through Go-Live.
- Free up key resources
- Allow enough time for your team to get involved throughout the course of the project. Partnering with Anaplan resources is the best way for your model builders to learn the technology and capabilities. This also reduces the reliance on external resources for future development.
- Keep the user stories (requirements) for your first release short and focused; don’t try to boil the ocean.
- Sprint Planning
- Keep foundational and high priority requirements in the first 1–2 sprints, with lower priority items in the later sprints.
- Utilize a master bucket–which feeds into each sprint cycle–to collect new user stories and allow for priorities to change.
- Scrum meetings
- Scrum meetings are the daily stand up (DSU) meetings for the project team to review progress and issues.
- Keep the meetings short, typically no more than 15 minutes answering: 1) what I did yesterday, 2) what I’m committing to today, and 3) what’s in the way.
- Sprint Reviews
- The project sponsor should be involved in the sprint reviews to ensure the team is heading down the right path and course correct as needed.
- Invite key change agents in the organization to prepare for end user adoption and training.
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT) Phase
- Don’t test a moving target. If a critical new requirement comes up, UAT should be paused until completed and the timeline updated to accommodate the change.
- Prioritize defects as they come up and clearly communicate which defects need to be resolved prior to Go-Live.
- Deployment
- Schedule training
- Anaplan offers a variety of on-demand and in-person training courses for both end users as well as model builders. Learn more about starting training here.
- Go-Live and Post-Go-Live Support
- Schedule the go/no-go meeting well in advance, as it provides the team with a goal date to drive to completion.
- Anaplan is here to help! If post-go-live issues arise, our world class support team will partner with you for a resolution. For more details, check out Anaplan Customer Support.