The NDIS Plan Management Process
There are many ways to approach the question of how to deliver on NDIS plan management expectations. For example, some participants in the delivery industry believe that NDIIS-like plans (also known as NDIS + or NDIIS-like) will provide too much, too quickly. However, other participants in the delivery industry, especially those who run training sessions, think that NDIS plan management is the key to long-term success for any project.
When we use NDIS + or NDIS -like language to describe a delivery plan, the more involved the provider is in self-management, the less they will need to pay for their services. However, just as many consultants and other training participants believe that a deliverable needs to be challenging enough without having all the steps taken by the project manager (or even their direct employees) included, there is also an assumption that the only way to get the plan right is to have the participant pay for every step.
In a recent article in Engineering manager, titled ” NDIS vs SaaS”, I suggested that this assumption was erroneous and could be overcome by ensuring that the team behind the deliverable engaged enough in self-management to ensure it was robust enough to survive any impact from its penetration into the external funding pool. Now that my argument has been considered, it is time to view the actual scope of NDIS plan management and what is needed to be successful.
NDIS plan management is usually delivered via an NDE or NDT that supports the full range of functionality that a deliverable might require. As such, NDIS plan management must support five phases:
- Initiation of the process.
- Development of deliverables.
- Specification and testing.
- Migration of these deliverables into production systems and finalisation of the release.
- Post-delivery status reporting.
The complete list of five phases is not necessarily inclusive. It may vary depending on the complexity of the project, the delivery profile, and the size of the organisation and its diverse customer base. Within the remit of the NDIS plan manager, it is to establish what scope of work supports each phase of this process and ensure that all necessary stages are kept.
The implementation of NDIS plan management requires that it supports the initiation of the process itself. It involves suitable sourcing resellers of the underlying infrastructure, procuring domain-specific application software and establishing a first contract with the relevant reseller to provide the necessary equipment and software to support the resellers in production.
Once the infrastructure is in place, the reseller relationship can be considered concluded. At this point, the product development team can be regarded as the active stakeholders in the overall lifecycle of the system. A typical NDIIS plan includes an application package integrated into the system and designated as a critical customer profile.