The following are a few pointers for project managers to consider during the design phase of the project:

• The fit-gap analysis, requirements analysis, and the project plan need to be signed off to start the functional design phase. You can break them up into areas and start sooner if you have specific areas signed off.
• Make the team put together the overall functional architecture and the flow across applications, and review with the respective stakeholders.
• Start with the functional design for areas on which the rest of the solution has a dependency. For example, customer and product masters are essential for the downstream supply chain, invoicing processes, and others.
• Dedicate resources for large, complex functional areas early on. Also, make sure to have dedicated time from business users.
• Based on the fit-gap analysis, the implementation team, along with solution advisors, should prepare a plan of approach to address the critical gaps.
• Divide responsibilities by area and try to have smaller FDDs created for each area. This will help to manage them better.
• While the FDD work is in progress, assign the development and QA teams for each functional area. Engage them in reviewing the functional design, and support the respective business analysts early on.
• You need to plan for multiple iterations and reviews. Functional designs are very crucial. Upfront reviews can save a lot of development hours and rework while also increasing the overall quality of the deliverables.
• Identify all of the cross-functional requirements; the solution architect should lead them to suitable designs.

Cross-functional reviews are critical in larger projects. Have recurrent meetings every week or twice a week (as needed) to review the functional designs with all of the functional team members together. Prioritize the reviews for foundation items, such as customer-master and product-master changes, which will impact other functional areas.

Cross-functional reviews will help to improve the solutions (the rest of the team may have inputs on doing the same thing in a better way or with less customization). Also, more importantly, you will be forcing the team to review each other's designs by pulling them together into a room.

Engage business SMEs early on for reviews (set up a design walkthrough, provide deadlines for getting feedback, and seek a sign-off for each of the functional designs).

Depending on the complexity, involve SMEs external to the project for an independent review and recommendations. For example, when you start auditing the financial results of the company, your accounting practices will automatically improve as people know that they are going to be audited.

Next, let's explore important considerations while writing the FDD.