A handover meeting should be conducted with whom originally sized the project and made the original proposal. You should also get in touch with anyone who has already worked with this customer to gather their insights.

Full process for project start is described here.

1. Assure and validate team request
2. Create or ask project creation on OnTrack. You can do it on http://ontrack.outsystems.com 
3. Follow the guidelines on OnTrack User Guide
4. Send email to DL GAP Auditors requesting the auditors (UX and Architecture) for your project, proposing upfront the assessment dates

Projects go well when everyone is aligned. The delivery method plays a major role on the alignment of all parties involved (project members, stakeholders, sponsors, business users, ...).
When working with new participants make sure you discuss and agree on the specific approach being followed. If needed use the Agile Workshop presentation, review it if required and share it with the everyone.

Project goals, milestones, deliverables, delivery method, responsibilities and risks should be clear and accepted by everyone involved in the project. The usual way of doing this is through a kickoff meeting. To succeed, prepare the presentation it with the customer project manager before the meeting, and share it with everyone afterwards.
Examples:
Charles River - Acceleration drug development - RADS Phase1
Charles River - ICM Phase 2 - Internet Colony Management
Charles River - GEMS - Colony Management System Project

While delivering an internal kick off, make sure you cover the business context and vision for the system, the high level plan and how you are going to work.

While delivering an internal kick off agree with the team what READY and DONE means in your project.

It's time to create the project's overall plan, mapping how the project's effort is going to be distributed over time, considering customer constraints as well as the team members planned vacations or other absences. Next you should determine the exact sprint dates, go-live dates or other key dates based on relevant business events and the way you've planned the effort.
You should use our standardized spreadsheet  for Project Plan and Budget Control.

 

This is question 1 of the usability checklist. The vision document contains the vision for the app, its purpose and benefits for the organization, its users and their top user stories. This is a living document and should be reviewed and shared both with customer stakeholders and the delivery team.

In the end of initiation it's important that you share the work done so far. Recap of the week activities and all the produced content shoudl be presented, on a session called initiation wrap-up. 

Requirements will change during project, so it’s important to have a central repository where you can manage you work and review priorities with the customer and the team. Write your requirements as users stories, using the customer language. For Agile Projects, make sure that you have the complete set of committed high level requirements, contained within the agreed budget.

Dependencies like integrations and migrations usually have strong impact into the new software being developed. Others, like high volume of concurrent users also require some architectural solutions. Make sure that you keep track of them and address each early in the project.

It’s expected that the most relevant eSpaces, entities, integrations and business rules are mapped into a 4 layer canvas. Make sure it follows the best practices and reflects all business concepts, user stories, roles, information architecture and constraints captured in the vision document as well as technical requirements and integration needs.  This canvas must be shared across the entire technical team, possibly including customer technical stakeholders like a factory manager or an IT architect. If you need, ask for an expert’s help.

Access to development and quality environments, communications, integrations’ APIs, among others, should be in place so that the team can start developing and testing.

By identifying the most frequent and/or importance user stories for the most relevant personas, teams are able to focus the usability improvements in what will provide greatest value to the users. Use the vision document to capture and share it.

Field studies allow you to learn more about real users and their working context. Photos and other materials should be gathered to enrich the development perspective.

Developing mockups are a great way to design the pages that most suit the user’s needs, unconstrained by technology. These are also a great communication tool to be used with customers and the development team.
Check this document to understand how you can use OutSystems' Balsamiq licenses to create your mockups.

Creating sample pages with the application’s main visual components like header, footer, menu, simple form and list will improve the efficiency of in sprint development. If appropriate ask a web designers’ help.

OutSystems is keen on delivering Great Apps, that's why we've created the Great Apps Program that drives and promotes usability, architecture, performance and code quality practices in all our projects. Under this program you will have experts, assessing and auditing your solution, and supporting your team delivering a great app.

How to book Usability and Architecture auditors?
This program is mandatory for all projects with duration of 1 month or more. Book your auditors by sending an e-mail to DL GAP Auditors requesting for both auditors. Identify the project and suggest dates for the 1st assessments.

Web design is mandatory in every OutSystems project
A Great App, it's also a good looking app! Under the Great Apps program, all projects have 5 days of a designer working with their teams to create a visual concept for the application. This effort will be added on top of the project effort and will not be charged to the customer. To request and book a designer for your project, send an e-mail to Experts Allocation requesting it. Identify the project and the expected start date for the designer.

Do you need help on Usability practices in your project?
If you need extra support on Usability practices, to create or validate an UX concept, perform usability assessments, run usability tests or provide overall guidance, you can request a UX Angel for your project. Send an email to Experts Allocation with project code and when it will be needed. This effort  must be charged to the customer, coming out of the the project budget with Delivery Manager rate.