IDEAS methodology

Coveo™ Professional Services (PS) teams employ a project management methodology called IDEAS when carrying out the implementation of a solution based on the Coveo Platform. The IDEAS methodology covers the key activities to complete for each project and can be easily integrated with other methodologies.

INITIATE DEFINE EXECUTE APPRAISE SUCCESS

Project Initiation

  • Review scope
  • Kick-off project
  • Review business objectives
  • Determine success criteria
  • Plan project

Design Solution

  • Audiences
  • Requirements
  • Connectivity
  • Data normalization
  • User interfaces
  • Reporting

Setup and Configuration

  • Initial configuration on non-production environment

Configure Data Sources

Configure User Interfaces

Configure Usage Analytics and Machine Learning

Testing and Quality Assurance

  • Tune relevance
  • Support business user testing
  • Test Usage Analytics
  • Resolve issues

Go-Live Preparation

  • Document the implementation
  • Prepare deployment guide

Go-Live

  • Provide hyper-care support

Project Completion

  • Transfer knowledge with customer
  • Handover to Coveo Support
  • Review success criteria
Iterate/Rework

The following tables provide a typical breakdown of responsibilities between the client and the PS project team. For each phase, an estimated percentage of efforts and typical duration are indicated. This information is meant to help plan the collaboration between PS and clients, but can also be useful to anyone looking to implement a Coveo-powered solution, such as partners or clients.

Initiate

Description
  • Determine business objectives and project guidelines.
  • Establish communication processes.
  • The PS team gets acquainted with the client personnel.
  • Select and configure collaboration tools.
PS activities Expected from client
  • Review statement of work, licensing, and scope.
  • Review business objectives.
  • Determine success criteria and measurement metrics.
  • Kick-off the project:
    • Introduce PS and client teams.
    • Discuss project dependencies, targets, and timeframe.
    • Align IDEAS with client project methodology.
    • Discuss collaboration and interaction expectations.
    • Determine project meeting and reporting schedule for each phase, along with meeting attendees and report audience.
    • Discuss other client initiatives with potential impact on Coveo deployment.
  • Provide timeline constraints.
  • Provide information on other projects that may impact the Coveo deployment.
  • Provide information on required collaboration with internal teams, such as IT, Business, or other projects.
  • Provide business objectives and success criteria.
Deliverables
  • Kick-off presentation

Estimated effort: 5% of total hours

Typical duration: 1 week

Define

Description
  • Design the solution so that PS and client teams share a common vision of the work to execute.
  • Coveo installation in non-production environment.
  • The search solution begins to emerge.
PS activities Expected from client

Requirements review and gathering, solution design

  • Identify audiences.
  • Determine business, functional, user interface, and security requirements.
  • Define access to content and metadata.
  • Define usage analytics requirements.
  • Design and document Coveo solution.

Setup and Configuration

  • Obtain appropriate security credentials for all sources and environments.
  • Perform initial configuration in non-production environments:
    • Install Coveo solution integration, if applicable (for example, Salesforce).
    • Configure connectors.

Project Management

  • Finalize project plan and timeline.
  • Track and report on project activities.

Meetings, Collaboration, and Communications

  • Begin communication and reporting schedule.
  • Prepare a relevance workshop with a Customer Success Manager.
  • Approve the project plan and align with it.
  • Participate in scheduled meetings.
  • Participate in requirement workshops to share knowledge of source data and to make design decisions including choosing between many out-of-the-box options.
  • Provide indexing accounts, developer accounts, and other IT required accesses.
  • Plan user change management activities.
Deliverables
  • Solution design document
  • Project plan

Estimated effort: 15% of total hours

Typical duration: 2-4 weeks

Execute

Description
  • Implement all parts of the solution for user acceptance testing.
  • Validate and fine-tune data sources.
  • Search interfaces take shape in an iterative fashion, consistently syncing with the client to make sure the end-user experience is headed where it should.
PS activities Expected from client

Content Indexing Configuration

  • Configure connectors.
  • Normalize data:
    • Normalize data across sources.
    • Configure indexing pipeline extensions to improve content retrieval, metadata, and presentation.
  • Index sources defined in scope.

Security and Compliance

Usage Analytics and Machine Learning

User Interfaces Integration

  • Configure, tailor, and integrate user interfaces defined in scope.
  • Integrate other Coveo components (for example, content recommendations panel).
  • Iteratively review results following source indexing and data normalization.
  • Iteratively review results following user interface customization.
  • Implement change management activities.
Deliverables
  • Coveo Solution in the non-production environment

Estimated effort: 55% of total hours

Typical duration: 3-7 weeks

Appraise

Description
  • Test the now fully formed search solution to the utmost, iron out final issues, tune relevance, and review usage analytics.
  • The client performs a final review of the solution and decides when to go live.
PS activities Expected from client

Testing and Quality Assurance

  • Validate results, tune relevance and solution.
  • Support client testing.
  • Test usage analytics.
  • Resolve issues.
  • Document deployment guide.
  • Plan Go Live.
  • Plan and execute tests.
  • Report on issues.
  • Participate in issue triage meetings.
  • Approve solution.
Deliverables
  • Coveo solution ready to be implemented in production

Estimated effort: 15% of total hours

Typical duration: 3-5 weeks

Success

Description
  • The solution is now a reality, accessible to all targeted end users with monitoring of relevance, query time performance, and usage analytics.
  • Documentation is completed and knowledge is transferred to the client and support teams.
PS Expected from client

Go Live and post Go Live support

  • Support Go Live.
  • Hypercare support period.
  • Knowledge transfer from Coveo to client team.
  • Handover to support.
  • Review success criteria.
  • Project closure activities.
  • Plan and execute production Go Live.
  • Participate in knowledge transfer.
  • Measure success criteria and business objectives.
Deliverables
  • An Implementation of Work document detailing what has been implemented
  • Knowledge transfer to client
  • Knowledge transfer to Coveo Support

Estimated effort: 10% of total hours

Typical duration: 2 weeks