Five Program Management Checklists

Five checklists keep an EQQ-Triangle rollout on track: Analyze Database, Install & Configure, Define & Create SQL Views, Ongoing User Support, and Program Management itself. Each covers one stage of the rollout, and together they make sure the right people, access, data views and follow-up are in place before problems appear.

The Plan for the Worst discussion in EQQ Services has five mini-projects. Here are five simple, practical checklists.

We recommend you consider them as a starting point, and modify them based on your judgment and “conditions on the ground.”

When should you use a program management checklist?

A checklist earns its place when a job has several steps, several people and a few dependencies that are easy to forget. Adopting a new query tool across a company is exactly that kind of job. The software installs quickly, but the work around it – agreeing scope, getting access, choosing the right users – is where schedules slip.

Use these lists at the start of each stage to confirm you are ready, and again at the end to confirm the stage is done. If an item does not apply to your company, remove it. If something is missing, add it.

They are written for EQQ-Triangle, Ewarenow’s read-only, installed, no-SQL query tool, but the habit works for any program that touches a business database.

1. Analyze Database

• Qualified database analyst engaged.
• Has access to the company’s SQL database.
• Scope of analysis agreed:
  • Based on a few important business and/or professional functions (not the entire database).
  • Target schedule agreed.
  • Content of result agreed (ER Diagram plus supporting info and issues).
• Track progress.
• Receive results.
• Review; distribute; approve.

Why does Analyze Database come first?

Everything later depends on knowing what is in your database and how the tables relate. An ER Diagram (entity-relationship diagram) shows that structure on one page. Without it, the people choosing fields for queries are guessing.

The most common mistake is trying to analyze everything. A business database can hold hundreds of tables, and most of them have nothing to do with the questions your team asks every week. Pick a few important functions – for example the ones where people most often wait for a report – and analyze only those.

Agree the schedule and the form of the result before work starts. “Review; distribute; approve” is the last item for a reason: the analysis is only useful once the people who will rely on it have seen it and signed off. Send the ER Diagram and the list of issues to the users you plan to involve in the next stage.

2. Install & Configure

• Ensure there is a list of users for the EQQ App, with their roles and security settings.
  • They should include individuals who understand and support the Requests made in Analyze Database.
• Ensure that the company’s IT staff has provided and supports the IT Validation technical details.
• Verify that the EQQ App installation itself was successful.
• Verify that user and security settings in the EQQ App have been implemented.
  • And understood by the users themselves.
• Encourage all registered users to be aware of and freely use EQQ Documents.

How do you get a clean installation?

EQQ-Triangle is installed with your own database, so your IT staff are partners in this stage, not bystanders. Ask them early for the technical details they need to provide and the support they will give. Because EQQ-Triangle is read-only and follows the database permissions you have already set, the security conversation is usually simpler than people expect. See What Is the EQQ-Triangle? for how that works.

Build the user list before you install, not after. Each person needs a role and security settings, and the list should include the people who supported the requests in the analysis stage. They are the ones who will recognize whether the setup matches what they asked for.

Then check three things in order: the installation worked, the settings were applied, and the users understand them. The last one is the one teams skip. A user who does not know what they are allowed to see will either stop using the tool or keep asking for help. Pointing everyone to EQQ Documents early saves many of those questions.

3. Define & Create SQL Views

• A very good goal is three to five views, each supporting a different business function or professional function in Analyze Database.
• Try to ensure that one registered EQQ user is willingly assigned to be a query creator and query user for each function.
• Encourage those users to review the list of fields in their assigned view and ask for improvements – especially, ask for additional relevant fields to make the view more flexible and powerful.

What makes a good set of SQL views?

A SQL view is a saved, named slice of your data that presents related fields together in business terms. Query users pick fields from a view instead of working out joins between raw tables. A well-made view is what lets a non-technical person build a useful query on the first try.

Keep the count small. Three to five views, each tied to one function from the analysis, is enough to prove the value and learn what is missing. More views can follow once people are using the first ones.

Name one willing person per function. Someone who both creates and runs queries for their own area will notice quickly when a field is missing or confusing. Ask them to read the field list in their view and request additions. Adding relevant fields is cheap, and it is the easiest way to make a view more flexible. If you want to see what these users do day to day, read Get Answers Without Writing SQL.

4. Ongoing User Support

• Determine whether to order and pay for Ongoing User Support or not.
  • EQQ Documents is very extensive.

Do you need ongoing user support?

This checklist has one item because it is one decision. Ongoing User Support is optional, and the right answer depends on your team.

Start with what you already have. EQQ Documents is very extensive, and a team with a confident internal champion may find it covers most questions. A team with no one to turn to, or with high turnover among query users, may prefer to have help on call.

Make the decision on purpose and write it down. Revisit it if usage stalls or if new departments join.

5. Program Management itself

• Hopefully your Program Management work results in Plan A or something very close to it.
• If so, EQQ-Triangle usage will likely grow periodically.
• Perhaps you would check for that every few months and check for any problems if the growth stops or declines.
  • Or you may choose to hand that role to a successor.
• In any case we at Ewarenow will be grateful for any and all feedback you provide us.

What does program management look like after launch?

Plan A is the hopeful case: the first four checklists go well and adoption grows department by department without much steering. Plan B is a part-time program manager, a few hours per week, from your company or from Ewarenow, keeping each stage organized and moving. Either way, the last checklist is about watching the result.

The simplest check is a periodic look at usage. Growth means people find it useful. If growth stops or declines, look for the cause: a view missing a key field, a user who changed roles, a function that was never covered. Fix that one thing before adding more.

If you hand the role to a successor, give them these five lists and the ER Diagram. They will know what was done, what was agreed and where to look. To see how Ewarenow supports this stage, read about our program management services.

How do these checklists connect to the data you already have?

The checklists are about people and process, but the payoff is in your own data. Years of orders, deliveries, quality results and customer history already sit in your business database. The program exists to make that information easy to ask questions of, safely and without waiting on a specialist.

That is why the stages run in this order. You study the database, install a tool that respects its permissions, build a few views that speak in business terms, make sure people can get help, and watch whether use grows. If you are still comparing options, SQL Query Builder vs No-SQL Tool explains how the approaches differ.

Next step: try EQQ-Triangle on your own database

The fastest way to test these checklists is to run them on a small scope. Choose two or three functions, work through stages one to three, and see what your team can answer on their own. EQQ-Triangle runs on PostgreSQL, MySQL or MS SQL and comes with a free two-month trial, no credit card. Start your free EQQ-Triangle trial.

These checklists support the Program Management discussion in EQQ Services.