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FAQ -
Frequently Asked Questions about checklists and templates from Mercury Consulting Ltd.

Table of Contents

Glossary | Terms of Purchase

Does my "Visa Government" Card work?

Question: Why Checklists ?

Question: The templates and checklists don't fit exactly for my company

I am not a DBA (Database Administrator), which products are usable for me?

Question: My word processor uses the file extension ".doc", what should I do with the files with extension ".rtf" ?

Question: We started a project to define standards. We have time to write them ourselves, why should we purchase those templates ?

Question: Why do Mercury Consulting's products not cover functional requirements ?

Question: Does my "Visa Government" Card work?

YES - please follow following Instructions for "Visa Goverment" Card


Question: Why Checklists ?

Answer: What's better ? - A 800 page book or a 20 page checklist ?

Books transfer knowledge, but as long it is not applied without any gap it does not improve the business - any forgotten item might cause high follow-up costs.

And to ensure that no detail is forgotten - that's the purpose of checklist!

In case that the question in the checklist is not understood, or it is not known how to solve the issue addressed in the question, then a book, a consultant, a training - or a combination - is required. In this case the checklist helps to identify a knowledge gap.


Question: The templates and checklists don't fit exactly for my company

A generic template never can fit 100% for everybody, but therefore those documents are delivered as text files which you can customize using any word processor. But this customization by deleting, rewording or adding is still much more efficient than starting from the scratch.

I am not a DBA (Database Administrator), which products are usable for me?

We provide several database independent products which are of interest for operations managers, test managers, development managers...


Question: My word processor uses the file extension ".doc", what should I do with the files with extension ".rtf" ?

There are many popular word processors used worldwide, e.g. in alphabetical order:

IBM Lotus WordPro extension .lwp

Microsoft Winword extension .doc

Sun OpenOffice extension .swx

Sun StarOffice extension .swx


Using one of them for distribution would discriminate others. And your word processor might not provide an import filter for that specific format. Therefore we decided to use the vendor independent, neutral "Rich Text Format" with extension ".rtf" for distribution. All word processors known to us support this format.


Question: We started a project to define standards. We have time to write them ourselves, why should we purchase those templates ?

Answer:

(1) The documents cost between 60 and 200 USD. Use your internal costs for manhours in IT and calculate how many hours you can work for that. We suggest you purchase the template and spend your time on understanding, discussing and customizing all those items according your department- and team structure.

(2) Assuming that only 60% of the items in our templates are relevant for you, it's still faster to delete 40% than to write the 60% from scratch. And we are sure that you wuld forget some (even important) items at all.

Conclusion: Purchasing and customizing Mercury Consulting's templates enables you to deliver in less time for less costs documents which are more complete than starting yourself from scratch.


Question: Why do Mercury Consulting's products not cover functional requirements ?

Answer:

(1) Mercury Consulting Ltd. is not a publishing company but an consulting company with core competence is in the area of IT-operations. Our products are based on real world experience and real world needs in the area of IT-operations. Therefore we will not create products outside of our competence just for the sake to have a complete product portfolio.

(2) Functional Requirements are specific to each application, e.g. CRM, ERP or a billing system.

(3) As requirement templates are available for functional requirements there is no need to write similar documents.

(4) Functional Requirements are usually carefully defined by the business representatives in the project team, often using application specific requirements templates available on the market.

We recommend that you purchase application specific requirement templates and merge them with our customized document "Non-Functional Requirements" (product code NFREQ).


List of all products

Nonfunctional Requirements | Database OLA / SLA | Application Health Check | Database Health Check | Checklist for Production Release and System Handover | EAI-Interface Checklist | Template: Systems- and Operations Handbook | Checklist for Data Migration | DBA and Application Support: Job-Description and Self-Assessment. | Planning a security assessment |

 
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