Creating a Deployment Roadmap
Creating a Deployment Roadmap |
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During the feature design and development phase, you create the actual design — sometimes called the functional specification — for the Windows 2000 features you intend to implement in your organization. This is also the time to determine how the features you have selected will actually work in a production environment.
The technical dependencies of Windows 2000 features become more important during this phase, so it is important that the various deployment teams collaborate and share insight into the capabilities, functionality, and interdependencies of each feature. The technical design chapters in the remainder of this book will help you determine how to deploy specific features in your organization.
The functional design specification is the complete set of designs that you will test and refine. For example, you might have multiple design variations of your Microsoft® Active Directory™ namespace based on different business or IT requirements, each of which will be evaluated against business and IT criteria appropriate to your organization. Eventually, through technical testing and analysis, you will be ready to implement one Active Directory namespace for your organization. It is important to remember that this process and its results are specific to your organization.
The iterative design and testing process starts in this phase as each of your deployment teams creates their own plans and then synchronizes with each other to create a comprehensive design specification. Your test lab is also important during this phase as you test various configurations to determine how to use Windows 2000 features to meet your project objectives.
The functional design specification needs to provide your project teams with enough details about the features and functions your organization will deploy to help them easily identify resource requirements and commitments for implementing your Windows 2000 infrastructure.
During this phase, also create a project plan that contains the functional specification (the combined plans of each team) and a schedule. You will be ready to implement your project plan after you receive management approval to proceed with the deployment. Some primary deliverables you can include in your plan are: