Overview of This Article
This article is intended to document the process of adding customer-specific customization requests to the CIMcloud platform. For more information on understanding whether customizations are right for you, click here.
CIM Pro Services
The CIM Pro Services team consists of consultants, solutions architects and highly skilled front-end developers with deep domain knowledge of the CIMcloud platform.
When it comes to implementing new customizations, our team has a standard process to plan, document, implement, test and deploy your custom solution.
Customization Process Overview
Part 1: Getting Customizations Live
Part 2: Supporting Customizations Long Term
Customization Process Details – Part 1
Getting Customizations Live
Phase 1 – Discovery, Commercial Planning and Scoping
The planning and discovery phase is the most critical component of the customization process.
This phase will connect you and your team to a consultant or solution architect to fully understand and document the key commercial requirements needed, and design a solution and road map for our development team to execute.
This phase will also provide a documented SOW with all associated costs (excluding change orders), to guarantee a shared vision between our team and yours.
Phase 2 – Technical Planning
Once the initial discovery phase has been completed and the SOW approved, the commercial requirements will be handed off to a CIMcloud developer for technical planning. Once complete, the technical plan is peer-reviewed by another developer and / or the original solution architect, and either amended or approved for implementation.
Phase 3 – Implementation
The implementation phase consists of our developers writing the custom code needed to achieve the end solution and deploying to our staging environment for internal testing and peer review.
Phase 4 – Internal Testing and UAT
Upon implementation of the customization to our staging environment, our team, along with the solution architect, will conduct standard testing to ensure no additional issues have been introduced as a result, and verify the customization functions as documented during commercial planning.
Once tested internally, a link to the staging environment will be provided for customer testing / UAT. Any additional punchlisting or customer feedback will be addressed during this stage.
Phase 5 – Deployment / Publishing
Once final customer approval is given, the deployment and publishing of customizations to the live platform will be scheduled. The scheduling of deployment will vary depending on the complexity of the customization. It is critical to notify your customer-facing employees of any publishes to critical workflows (i.e. product catalog, ordering, payment processing), so they can be prepared for the change and know how to report any issues they find.
Once customizations are published and verified by the CIM Pro Services team, you will be notified and instructed to conduct additional live site testing, and report any issues.
Phase 6 – Stabilization
Once your customizations have been published and are live, CIM Pro Services will leave the project open and set it to a stabilization period to address any additional fringe issues that may arise. The duration of stabilization will depend on the complexity of the customization, and the amount of usage it receives.
Once the stabilization period is complete, the customizations move into long-term support.
Customization Process Details – Part 2
Supporting Customizations Long Term
Ongoing Support
Standard product support does not cover customizations, so ongoing support or updates will need to be routed through our professional services developers to be scoped, estimated and executed. This includes customization compatibility work that may be required to allow your to stay up to date on the latest version of the CIMcloud platform.
Version Update Compatibility
A “Version Update” is the process that CIMcloud uses to update your instance of the CIMcloud platform (including the software code making it work, the supporting services, and any system/application data that is relies on to operate).
For more information on Version Updates, click here.
It is important to understand that customizations are not factored in or tested by the CIMcloud product teams as they continue to release updated product features. This means there is no guarantee your customizations will be fully compatible with new releases, which often results in Customization “Compatibility Work” to make your customizations work with the new version of CIMcloud that you are moving to with the Version update.
For more information on Compatibility Work, click here