Scope and Objectives

The scope is the baseline for creating a specification for your deployment project. The scope of your deployment project is defined largely by your answers to the following questions:

• What business needs do you want to address with Windows 7?
• What are the long-term goals for the deployment project?
• How will your Windows 7 client computers interact with your IT infrastructure?
• What parts of your IT infrastructure will the project touch, and how will this happen?

The scope is simply a statement of what you are trying to accomplish and how you plan to accomplish it. Your statement of scope need only be a few paragraphs long and should not be longer than a page.

Current Environment

Document your existing computing environment, looking at your organization's structure and how it supports users. Use this assessment to determine your readiness for desktop deployment of Windows 7. The three major areas of your computing environment to assess include your hardware, software, and network.

• Hardware Do your desktop and laptop computers meet the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 7? In addition to meeting these requirements, all hardware must be compatible with Windows 7.
• Software Are your applications compatible with Windows 7? Make sure that all of your applications, including line-of-business (LOB) applications, work with computers running Windows 7.
• Network Document your network architecture, including topology, size, and traffic patterns. Also, determine which users need access to various applications and data, and describe how they obtain access.

Note Where appropriate, create diagrams to include in your project plan. Diagrams convey more information than words alone. A good tool for creating these diagrams is Microsoft Office Visio 2007. See http://www.microsoft.com/office for more information.