If you are reading this article, then you are probably already familiar with the Pre-project survey term.What is it and why is it needed? Who needs it and who does not? Is it possible to conduct it on your own and not to involve third-party specialists? What are the results for the company from the Pre-project  survey? We will try to answer these and other questions below.

Let's start with the point that surveys can be different.Different customers and different contractors under the Pre-project  survey term mean completely different types of work and different results. Which survey your company needs depends on many factors, such as:

• Company scope and structure

• Internal organisational structure of the company

• Current level of automation and consolidation of business-processes at the enterprise

• The project to be launched

The main objective of the survey is to answer the question WHAT, WHERE,WHY,HOW. That is, to describe the main goals and objectives of the potential project, to record the organizational, territorial and functional framework of the project, to define the architecture of the target system and the stages to achieve the set goals of the project.

Depending on the particular situation, the Pre-project  survey may differ in difficulty and the range of tasks to be done.

For example:

An express survey takes 2-3 weeks, during which, in addition to the above points, a complete list of processes to be automated for a particular project will be drawn up and recorded.

The detailed Pre-project  survey lasts a bit longer, because in the process, in addition to everything that is done at the express survey, business processes are also described or rendered in the form of circuits (or both). Processes can be described as both “as is” processes (as it is now) and “to be” processes (as it will be later). This depends on the degree of process change within the project. In addition, depending on the content and complexity of the project, the resulting document (or as an annex to it) may also describe the functional requirements for the system.

Pre-project survey with modeling elements. In the process of such a survey, in addition to all of the above, it is performed modeling in the target information system. There are different types of work depending on the situation, but the main point is that in the process of recording functional requirements and “to be” processes, the agreed part of these processes is covered by the architecture of the selected solution as a target information system, and as a result, the customer can already partially see how the system will look like in the future. In this option, the customer receives different results. These include a documented description, presentation of the modeling results in the form of a seminar, and access to a customized demo database for familiarization. In general, modeling is often allocated as a separate stage, but there are cases when already within the first stage the customer needs to see some prototype of the target information system.

As a rule, a competent contractor after the first meeting already understands approximately what kind of survey can be offered for this company and for this project.

A company can perform the Pre-project  survey on its own if it has a specialist or a team of specialists with the following competencies:

• Experience in the implementation of complex implementation projects and in the development of project documents

• Knowledge in the accounting fields that are within the project framework

• Knowledge of the program product functionality (or a set of products depending on the project), on the basis of which the target information system will be created

• Skill in team organization, distribution of responsibility, accountability for results

Is it possible to implement an information system without the Pre-project  survey? It is impossible to answer the question definitively, we can only say with certainty that the higher the importance of a potential project, the more thoroughly you need to prepare for it and plan your actions. And if after a certain amount of time and money after the start of the project you want to find yourself not at point N, but where it was planned, then there is no way to get around without the Pre-project survey.