Step 1 – Identifying business drivers – understanding your needs and requirements

Before you jump headlong into your Horizon project, take a step back and ensure that you start to document what you are trying to achieve. Often, it can be very easy to get carried away with all the new, shiny, technological aspects of the solution, such as the installation and configuration of new hardware and software, which means that the end goal is either lost or is not relevant to the business.

It may be an obvious point to make, but the key to identifying the business drivers is to really understand what you want to evaluate. By this, we mean, is it a strategic decision based on the need to transform your organization with new working initiatives, or is there a more compelling event, such as the end of life of an operating system or application? It may even simply be the need to reduce costs. Whatever the case, you need to get that nailed down, written up, and documented on day one so that the project has meaning and direction, and even more importantly, provides a baseline to refer to when it comes to reviewing time in order to gauge whether the project has been successful.

Start by writing a document of requirements that lists the business needs, the current problems you need to solve, the vision, and any compromises and assumptions. As you progress through your project, you should regularly refer to this document to keep yourself focused on the end goal.