Fabris Schweighofer

Invorg is a start-up company located in London, ON, that focuses on providing products and services to non-profit organizations, especially in the health care industry. Invorg goal is to uplift communities through technology. More specifically, with Microsoft Dynamics 365.

The iCORA project developed a software to manage the operations at Cross Cultural Learner Centre (CCLC), which is a non-profit organization focused on supporting newcomers to Canada. CCLC had a modest application in place, but it used to do most of its work on paper. Invorg customized Dynamics CRM 2016 to accommodate CCLC's requirements aiming that the organization would soon manage all its services through the application, which would boost business performance, bring efficiency, and improve management capabilities.

I joined the project at the initial phase, where the elicitation sessions have been held already by the system architect person. Besides, the system architecture has been done by him already. I acted as a business analyst and project manager in the iCORA initiative.

 

Tasks Performed:

• Review the existing documentation, diagrams, workflows, and data models created by the system architect in terms of requirements and architecture design for Dynamics CRM 2016 application. Held knowledge transfer sessions with team members to have questions answered.

• Create a project plan, project schedule, work breakdown structure, deliverables and identify resources needed. Perform risk assessment and document assumptions and constraints.

• Build the project team with an internal quality assurance person, the system architect, and a remote scrum team located overseas, including a scrum master.

• Develop an Agile-Scrum framework for the project, including ceremonies, artifacts, expected behaviours, and ground-rules.

• Analyze and synthesize business and user requirements provided by existing documentation and translated them into user stories. Provide user story rationale and acceptance criteria so that developers and testers have the info needed to design solutions.

• Translate business requirements into activity diagrams, state diagrams, user interface (UI) mockups and data flow diagrams. Map user stories with UI mockups using Lucidchart.com so that the scrum team understands what user story each element associated with.

• Develop a Business Requirements Document (BRD) for the Dynamics CRM project with all details about the project, including the business needs, high-level project plan, stakeholder analysis, list of requirements, assumptions, constraints, risks, workflows, gap analysis and solution design.

• Create epics, features, and user stories on Microsoft Team Foundation Server® (TFS) and provide detailed requirement rationale and acceptance criteria for each user story. Manage sprints, product backlog, and sprint backlog on TFS.

• Communicate with CCLC representatives to clarify requirements.

• Attend and participate in scrum ceremonies, including daily stand-up meetings. Work with the local and remote scrum teams on a daily basis to develop and test the solution while keeping the communication flowing among the team members.

• Support the scrum master, who was geographically disperse, on making sure the scrum methodology is followed and built team spirit in the scrum team.

• Meet with the CRM architect on a regular basis to align the work done from a system point of view and the changes required in the CRM application for the next steps of the project.

• Plan and facilitate backlog grooming, sprint planning, and sprint retrospective meetings. Facilitate sprint review meetings with the CCLC team to show accomplishments and get feedback.

• Develop and execute test cases and user acceptance test scenarios based on user stories for the iCORA project for the purpose of solution verification.

• Track project progress, milestones and deliverables. Identify and manage project dependencies and critical path. Maintain a list of action items and risk register.

• Meet with the company’s board, which includes the CEO, to present the project status, progress, challenges, impediments, and discuss potential solutions.

• Analyze and propose to the internal team and the CCLC’s representative people options to deal with historical data stored in the legacy system to make an informed decision and plan a course of action.

• Develop change management strategies, including a training session and a communication plan to manage the transition from a paper-based process to an electronic management system.

• Develop a transition plan and training material for the users moving from the current to the future state for the Dynamics CRM solution.

• Deliver four training sessions to CCLC end-users to get familiar with Dynamics CRM user interface, how to enter data into the system, and how to execute full business processes.

• Plan and coordinate with internal and external stakeholders the rollout phase of the project. Support the transition period on-site for the first few days.

• Participate in the interview board to hire a business analyst and a quality assurance person. Review curriculum vitae of business analysts participating in a hiring process. After the onboarding process, provide coaching and mentoring to the junior business analyst and train her in the use of Microsoft Team Foundation Server® (TFS).

• Design business analysis procedures and best practices to be used in the creation of a Business Analysis Centre of Excellence (BA CoE) in the organization.