GOLD - Implementation Methodology

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LabWare GOLD Methodology Overview LabWare strongly believes that customers should be able to support their LIMS implementation themselves. Our entire business model is to develop superior yet customer-friendly LIMS solutions and to teach our customers how they can use those solutions effectively without unnecessary reliance on vendors. LabWare's interaction with a customer starts with a teacher / student relationship, evolves into a master / apprentice relationship, and eventually stabilizes into a supporting relationship. Each implementation project starts with training. LabWare offers a weeklong training program that is attended by all team members who will participate in the configuration work. The implementation then continues under the technical leadership of one of our certified implementation consultants. During this phase the team members receive on-the-job, hands-on training. Over time, usually in the second month, the team members start to feel comfortable with the tools and are ready to take on some of the configuration tasks. Our consultant mentors the team while continuing to tackle some of the more complex parts of the implementation. This relationship continues until the customer is ready to move the LIMS into production. By that time, the customer has become self-supporting and may need relatively little on-site consulting. LabWare continues to support the customer with online information, an email discussion forum, and assistance from our technical support staff via the telephone or if the customer prefers via email. Our Methodology LIMS is a significant investment. An organization that is implementing LIMS would like to have assurance of a good return on its investment. A successful LIMS should: Deliver significant and measurable benefits to the organization Be implemented quickly with minimal cost, disruption and utilization of scarce lab resources Gain wide user support, utilization and praise Prove its ability to support new business needs easily Pass all necessary regulatory inspections How does one deliver such a system? Based on work with many major international customers, LabWare has developed a remarkably successful and proven solution that we call Goal Oriented LIMS Delivery (GOLD). GOLD takes the best ideas from the IT industry and applies them to LIMS. It embraces effective project management techniques that fully utilize an evolutionary, participatory approach while maintaining tight time scales and regulatory compliance. The classical waterfall model of writing detailed requirements and functional specifications before performing any configuration is inappropriate for package based information systems where the users need to interact with the system to understand what functions and features are available. LabWare's goal oriented, iterative approach is a far more efficient way of delivering business systems. Our approach is based on high productivity tools, clear objectives, and small, very skilled teams. GOLD has been developed using the experience of hundreds of successful LIMS projects.