Planning for Deployment

Project Scope and Objectives

The first step in planning your deployment is defining your project objectives. It is in this step that you identify the specific business goals you want to achieve and how Windows 2000 can help you achieve them. This strategy will also help you choose the most useful Windows 2000 features.

In your project objectives, indicate the specific business concerns that you need to address. Include specific, short-term objectives, for example, "deploy Windows 2000 to 2,500 computers by the end of the business quarter," as well as more general, long-term objectives, such as "reduce ongoing software distribution costs."

Determine your objectives before you proceed with your deployment planning because they affect what you do and how you do it. Clear objectives help you stay on course.

When you document your project scope, indicate the areas, functions, and environments that your Windows 2000 implementation will cover. For example, you might be interested in updating an older file server but not in implementing an infrastructure-wide deployment of Active Directory.

Table 3.1 outlines some common Windows 2000–related business concerns and project objectives. Note that this table is only an example. You need to assess your own business concerns to derive your own objectives. You might find that a single business concern could be addressed by a number of project objectives, or that a single project objective could address a number of business concerns.

Table 3.1 Sample Windows 2000–Related Business Concerns and Project Objectives

Business Concern	Project Objective
Reduce total cost of ownership by extending the life of older systems.	Use Terminal Services to provide a Windows 2000 desktop experience to systems that would otherwise require an upgrade.
Make it easier for users to locate and access resources on the network.	Use Microsoft® Active Directory™ to store information about all objects on the network.
Support roaming users by providing access to their documents and system information from multiple computers.	Use Roaming User Profiles to copy desktop settings and documents to a location on the network so that a user's settings and documents are available wherever the user logs on.