How can the project team see potential conflicts up-front and address them early in the implementation process? It starts with being able to view a business solution from both a conceptual and a physical perspective. Let's review the conceptual and physical perspectives of a business solution.
Each of the key players (Business, IT, Implementation Partner) in a COTS implementation may view the business solution differently. Business owners and end users will tend to view a solution from a business perspective. Technology-oriented players like IT and the Implementation Partner will tend to view a solution from a software perspective. There are five levels used to define a business solution (solution, business process, software product, product feature set, product feature). What is important to note is that business requirements conflicts occur at the conceptual level (independent of software), whereas configuration conflicts happen at the physical level...