Introduction
FastTrack for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (such as Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, or Unified Operations apps) is Microsoft's customer success service. It's designed to help customers and partners achieve a successful deployment of Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365. To deliver this service, FastTrack solution architects use Success by Design. FastTrack team engagement is available to customer projects that meet the FastTrack eligibility requirements. Because not all projects will qualify, Microsoft is making a tailored version of Success by Design available for partners and customers to use on their own. The Use Success by Design for Dynamics 365 apps solutions learning path examines this version and how partners and customers can use Success by Design to achieve a successful deployment of Microsoft Power Platform or Dynamics 365.
Success by Design is the prescriptive guidance (approaches and best practices) for designing, building, and deploying a Dynamics 365 solution. Success by Design is based on Microsoft's experience in providing engineering oversight across thousands of deployments with hundreds of partners through the FastTrack program over the years. Its fundamentals are good solution architecture and design, technical capabilities of the Dynamics 365 product line, and proven approaches to design and implementation challenges that arise during a business process transformation and implementation.
Solution architects on projects have a unique role in a customer implementation and are responsible for the success of the deployment and timely onboarding process for users. The guidance is designed to help the solution architect achieve that goal. This guidance works best when it is run by a qualified solution architect who isn't part of the implementation team. If that isn't possible for an implementation, then the project's solution architect can perform the role.
Success by Design includes several project workshops. These workshops are mixtures of interactive meetings, TechTalks, and follow-up communication and tasks. These workshop topics include:
- Solution blueprint
- Test strategy
- Data model
- BI and analytics design
- Gap solution design
- Data migration
- Security
- Integration design
- Dual-write implementation
- Solution performance
- Cutover strategy
- Post go-live strategy
This learning path outlines how you can use these techniques on your own project, even if your project isn't actively being engaged with by the Microsoft FastTrack team. This first module is Success by Design, which provides an overview of the guidance. Other modules in the series will provide in-depth detail about individual topics.
Value for partners and customers
The Success by Design guidance establishes a methodology-agnostic series of checkpoints to help move Dynamics 365 projects toward success. The guidance is designed to promote candid discussions between the project teams to review progress on the project against numerous identified best practices. This approach allows partners and customers to take advantage of the broader community of Dynamics 365 projects that are being implemented and their lessons learned. The guidance isn't designed to measure the partner or customers individually; it's meant to bring them together as a team to guide their project toward a successful onboarding process for users.
The purpose of this module and learning path is to provide an introduction on how to use the Success by Design guidance. This path is intended for the person or department that is responsible for the deployment of Dynamics 365, including functional, technical, and business resources who are responsible for the deployment and adoption of the system.