Software Governance: Best Practices

Software Governance is increasingly important as an organization grows and a CRM Matures. We previously covered the Importance of A Governance Team to manage the process.  Here are some additional best practices for Software Governance.

Document & Roadmap Enhancement Opportunities

Feature requests are likely coming from all over the organization...but are they being managed? Ideally there should be a centralized location for people to enter their requests, provide system feedback and see if anyone is considering their request. Salesforce Ideas is a great way to manage some of these requests (Note: not yet available in Lightning Experience). Requests should be categorized to help with the planning process. For example, a bug-fix request will likely be higher priority than a Strategic Enhancement .

Document Enhancements and Changes

Prior to releasing new functionality, document the changes you are making. This is important so future team members will understand the change, how it was designed, and what the purpose was.

Quality Assurance - First Do No Harm!

Always test changes in a Sandbox prior to deployment. Test with Power Users and incorporate their feedback to enhance the change when possible. 

You never know when something will go wrong, so have a roll-back plan in place and backup all data prior to any major enhancement. 

Push to production on days and times when usage is low, and always test all changes in production after enhancements are deployed. 

Change Management

With changes being so easy to make in Salesforce, it can be difficult to remember the importance of Change Management! Don’t surprise users with new functionality as it can hurt adoption. Be sure to over-communicate! 

• Early on, communicate that a change is coming and why it is coming. What problem is the change trying to solve and what is in it for the user. 
• Before the release, communicate that a change is close, when the change will occur, how to prepare for the change and any warnings people need to be aware of (such as downtime). 
• After the enhancements have been deployed, announce that the changes are live, provide information on what users need to do now and provide links to support documents and trainings schedules.    

These best practices of Software Governance can help your CRM to mature in a consistent and orderly way and increase user adoption.

Feel free to contact us for any assistance pertaining to CRM!