Support

Most projects, from simple work requests to major application development, will deploy and go on to be used and supported for several years. Some projects might embark on a continuous improvement cycle, meaning a team will start immediately to plan and implement the next round of improvements. Others may launch with no pre-ordained plan for future enhancements, but will still require support, repairs, or updates. For both, Support activities (including measurement and evaluation tasks) help team members and clients capture product impact and plan for the future.

Once launched, the team and client can gather real-life data on the product: Is it saving users time and effort? Is it performing adequately at scale? How satisfied are clients and end users with the solution? How much support and user assistance has been required? This kind of data-driven feedback is vital in prioritizing updates and enhancements, managing technical/design debt, and applying lessons from one project to others.

Project activities

• Gather usage data (analytics, account usage)
• Collect support/service desk issue summaries
• Conduct project retrospective
• User testing

Deliverables and outcomes

• Project retrospective report
• Usability report summaries (periodic)
• Application road map
• Merged product specification