Salesforce implementation maturity benchmark launches
What started as a fun project, collecting anecdotes about implementation issues in April 2019 became a book, movie trailer and presentation series by Dreamforce19. At that point we’d got 400 confessions and made the bold claim that we’d have 1000 by Dreamforce2020. We’ve hit our 1000th Org Confession before registration for Dreamforce has been announced.
A learning experience
OrgConfessions.com has been valuable for a number of reasons, albeit slightly painful for Salesforce:
1. It is a fun way of reminding every Admin, Dev, Architect and Consultant that the Salesforce “power comes with responsibility”. Some User Group Leaders start each event with a reading from the “book of OrgConfessions”.
2. It is cathartic. When you are having a bad day, you can read OrgConfessions and you realize that someone in the ecosystem is having a worse day.
3. The root cause analysis has highlighted key areas that require more training. The analysis we did at DF19 on the 400 confessions and the recent analysis on all 1000 has given the same answer. Analysis, Architecture, Documentation and DevOps are still the top 4 issues.
4. Salesforce and the ISV partners are filling the gaps. Salesforce is doubling down on Architecture with a certification, a mascot called Ruth, blog and best practice articles. I now have a regular Trailhead Live slot on business analysis — you can find the video here . Salesforce announced at TDX20 it is launching the DevOps Center. Elements.cloud has announced a partnership and integration with the Salesforce DevOps leader — Copado.
5. It has highlighted how strategic Salesforce has become and the need for a Center of Excellence and more formal Governance around implementation projects. We’ve launched a COE Lounge where COE professionals can swap notes and experiences.
Org #1000 — an absolute corker
Org #1000 is fantastic is it underlines so many of the problems in the previous 999 confessions:
Consultant enabled GSuite SSO in production. Set all users to SSO only. And SSO was not configured correctly. Going on 12 hours now, once your browser session expires you cannot log back into Salesforce. Keep refreshing, we’re dropping like flies and going to pen & paper backups. There are so many ways this could have been avoided. But I guess the silver lining is that at least the consultant can’t log in to break anything else now!
Let’s unpack this.
- A consultant.
- Implements a high risk change.
- In Production.
- With no testing.
- Stops every user using Salesforce.
The future of OrgConfessions — “Best Run Orgs” — OrgAssessments
The question is, “We’ve hit 1,000. Is it time to stop?” What is interesting is that there are relatively few OrgConfessions that are repeated. But we think it has served its purpose. We’ve highlighted glaring implementation issues and shown that there is a clear need for implementation apps like Elements.cloud
So we want to focus on the positives. What does it take to be a “Best run Org”. We claim to have the best run Org on the planet. You can read about how we manage our Org in this detailed case study. You can even copy our implementation processes as we have made the process diagrams — all 26 — freely available.
To help customers understand what they do well and where they need investment we have launched OrgAssessment.com
It takes 20–30 mins to rate your Org implementation maturity. It is your qualitative assessment of how well you implement and drive changes into your Salesforce Org. Simply rate 64 questions each on a sliding scale 1–10. Instantly you will get a spider chart and report that covers 5 phases divided into 18 sections. Based on your score you will get tailored links to helpful 3rd party resources.
Why not run the OrgAssessment.com survey now — and then again in 6 months to see how far you have come. Use it to show to your rmanagement what you do well, and where you need investment.
