When it comes to looking for a Citrix Consultant or a Citrix Consultancy for that matter, it's vitally important to ensure the incumbent chosen is more than just an expert on Citrix. With projects becoming increasingly complex, the Citrix element is merely just one facet of a larger solution, providing the presentation capabilities needed to ensure end users can work with applications and systems.
Quality organisations and individuals will almost certainly be involved in, or work with a set of clearly defined requirements, which generally tend to have been devised by a Business Analyst working closely with the project stakeholders.
The requirements will include the functional and non-functional elements, which provide a checklist to ensure the success of the a project. I've recently worked on developing the requirements for a leading organisation which has helped me gain a better understanding of the analysis that needs to be done before a solution design can begin.
The next stage involves the Citrix Design stage where a high level design is developed to capture the key elements of design. Generally from my own experience, this can be incorporated as part of a wider solution whereby not only are the presentation aspects captured but the applications, data access and data storage layers are also documented. Including all the technologies involved in delivering and end to end solution.
Once a high level design is completed, the low level detail needs to be ascertained. This is the point where the nuts and bolts of the solution are finalised, including the servers required, including their specifications, to obtaining ip addresses and naming conventions. This again is documented into a low level design document.
Testing is very important, as coming up with a Citrix design was easy enough but not knowing how to verify the design to cope with the variety and potential complexity of the applications being deployed, always meant the design is never set in concrete.
The design is subject to change and only once the testing phases are complete, could I be comfortable in knowing my design was 'good to go'.