Question : Questionnaire for planning a new network

A customer would like to have a new network (encorporating several remote locations) - likely to be Windows based. I would like to present them with a questionnaire in order to capture all the necessary info required to plan and deploy the new design; things like current organisation design, geographical infrastructure, customer objectives, goals, timelines etc... I am looking for ideas, articles or URLs which will help me create this questionnaire.

Many thanks for your help.

Answer : Questionnaire for planning a new network

Overview of how to use a needs questionnaire, with guidelines on how questions should be worded for optimum results:
http://mime1.marc.gatech.edu/MM_Tools/NQ.html  
The same site has other needs analysis tools and helps
http://mime1.marc.gatech.edu/MM_Tools/analysis.html
A high-level of what a consulting firm does in doing a needs analysis:
http://www.wnycs.com/l1-ps/l2-consulting/sys-analysis.htm
Things to consider regarding security, to add to the needs analysis:
http://www.networkcomputing.com/1105/1105f23.html?ls=NCJS_1105rt

Essentially, you want to formulate a needs analysis based on what you have already mentioned.  Include current technology status as part of the questionnaire.  You need to know physical layout of the WAN, what WAN technologies are available at each location, what the departmental structure is, what the org chart looks like, what the data flow is (for example, for a manufacturer, the flow of an order from sales through design, manufacturing and delivery, with all the points between - this must be tailored for the industry your customer participates in.  Specific corporate goals, specific departmental goals, a cross-section of a user "wish list", all that kind of stuff.  

The physical aspects - type of infrastructure, cost concerns, risk tolerance, existing infrastructure, desired results, access types, access speeds required, number and type of printers needed or desired and volume of print per printer per functional area.  Data synchronization.  Data accessibility.  Backup requirements.  Disaster recovery issues.  Power protection.  Physical security and data security wants/needs/desires/concerns.  Legal issues - HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, data retention needs for IRS, for product liability, etc.

The list can get as long as you need it to.  To do due diligence you have to address everything you can possibly think of.  The first pass should be weeding out the stuff that you thought of that doesn't apply, and asking for input on additional topics of concern.  The second pass should be to determine how important each thing that still exists on your questionnaire is, to assign some type of weighting factor.  The third pass should be broken down by functional area, to cover the concerns of each department.  The fourth pass should be a consolidation of the results from the third pass, with only managers and executives reviewing and passing judgment on each item.

What you end up with after all of that is what you use to formulate your detailed proposal and executive summary.

Hope this helps.  Good luck.