A Demanding Environment
Today’s business environment places increasing demands on information technology (IT) organizations—rapid change, financial constraints, global interconnectedness, and meeting the expanding needs of a wide variety of stakeholders.
Technology advances have enabled many new business opportunities. However, teams dealing with new technology can quickly lose track of its business intent. At the same time, technology projects continue to challenge IT—many projects are unsuccessful or squander precious resources through poor quality results.
IT organizations have a desire to provide business-driven technology solutions more effectively and successfully, and look to industry leaders for help.
Microsoft’s Approach
The Microsoft® Solutions Framework (MSF) is an adaptable approach for successfully delivering technology solutions faster, with fewer people and less risk, while enabling higher quality results.
MSF helps teams directly address the most common causes of technology project failure— improving success rates, solution quality, and business impact.
MSF describes, among other things:
- Aligning business and technology goals
- Establishing clear project goals, roles, and responsibilities
- Implementing an iterative, milestone-driven process
- Managing risk proactively
- Responding to change effectively
Proven Success with MSF
MSF is a deliberate and disciplined approach to technology projects based on Microsoft internal practices, the experiences of Microsoft Services working with customers and partners, and industry best practices.
MSF proven practices are collected within five primary topic areas:
- The MSF Team Model enables projects to scale, ensures teams meet a variety of stakeholder needs, and defines goal-driven roles and responsibilities.
- The MSF Process Model drives fast, high-quality results through a proven project life cycle that identifies key project activities.
- The MSF Project Management Discipline applies industry standard project management best practices to MSF principles.
- The MSF Risk Management Discipline is a comprehensive, proactive approach to minimizing the factors that could impact project success.
- The MSF Readiness Management Discipline helps project teams identify skill gaps and opportunities for learning.
