What are your tips for a successful transition of finished project delivarebles to operations?

one aspect that i feel is often ignored or added as an afterthought is change management, which incorporates training and knowledge transfer. we are often focused on the technical aspects that these soft skills are often ignored. training and CM should be a workstream in the project in order to sustain gains from an implementation and minimize issues during hypercare

Lenka, handover process is almost same in both Waterfall and Agile. Agile recommends go with DevOps (Devlopement + Operations) model, which is both development and operations teams work together throughout the execution of the project/product.

Lenka -

In Waterfall methodology, we focus on documenting the transition documents and facilitating access requests for the Ops team to various aplications / servers. Dev team will do knowledge transfer to the Ops team during Warranty period and will do shadowing of Ops team towards the end of Warranty.

In Agile also documenting of required documents is expected to provide transition to Ops team. But in matured Agile teams and who are already in DevOps culture, transition is very easy as the Dev & Ops teams would have been working together even during the Sprints

I concur with Sromon on this. I think it's very important to establish a change control board to manage ongoing change in the operational environment. By doing so,the business customer will have a method to request changes to the application without deterring the project team from their intended goal.

Hi Lenka,

With lessons learned documented throughout the project phases, conduct post-project review and assessment of both positive and negative experiences.
Provide smooth knowledge transfer from the project team to the operational team. Include operational members throughout the project phases to arrive at the finished deliverables.
There should be proper transition documentation to communicate the processes and procedures required to perform or support the deliverables.

Lenka, I pretty much agree with Girjia's feedback. One thing to remember, in agile, you deliver increments of working products throughout the project so transition should be a bit smoother than the Waterfall where you handover the entire product at the end.

Lenka, you are touching a very important aspect of project delivery; strategic intent or benefits realisation.
It is important to include the criteria of measuring the benefits realisation of the project. Depending on the industry there can be different approaches, but most common is to include "Operational Readiness" or "Operating Model" requirements in the project deliverables. Having a Agile mindset keeps the focus on the Value of the project and not just having a scenario of "A good project Manager successfully delivering the Wrong project".
Typically acceptance criteria is focussed on the project scope of execution and not the business realisation criteria of the project, it is therefore very important to keep the focus on the strategic intent of why you are executing the project.

Lenka -

I have actually been having this discussion on my current assignment as well.

Regardless of an AGILE --or-- WATERFALL project delivery, my advice would be to make sure that you had a clearly defined scope that itemized what was included in the overall set of project deliverables. Your question regarding how to "...ensure that the deliverables will create benefits as intended? " is what I've named " value realization ". This typically is NOT something generally covered within the scope of a project. Consider the construction of a home. You will be able to prove to the new homeowner that HVAC has been properly installed & tested, however, you will not be around to help vet whether or not this HW installation will deliver the expense savings as was advertised. "Why...?" Because that aspect of the project was NOT in the contract / plan for delivery. Likewise, if that type of deliverable was not included in the SCOPE DOCUMENT of your project, as an element of "value realization", would not be something the PROJECT TEAM would end up having to confirm.

"Value realization" within the scope of the project would be something like: " reduction of keystrokes by 50% "; "record imaging error quality reduction of 50%"; # servers retired. This can be measured AND validated thru testing.

"Value realization" outside of the scope of the project would be things like: "revenue generation"; " cost reduction "; "increase of market share"; "efficiency"; "product quality"; adoption rate, etc. Typically, these aspects of project / product value would come from the business side. NOTE: I have not personally experienced ( nor have awareness ) of any organization that attempted to follow-up on this aspect of a proposed scope / business case document.

In summary, the role of the PM in delivering project / product "value" is defined by what is included within the approved scope statement. Inclusion / exclusion of these types of success factors will ultimately come down to the cost associated with the LOE needed from select project team members to hang around LONGER until those metrics are validated. If NOT included within the scope of the project, it is up to the project owner to make sure that what has now been built meets its intended need.

Hope my response helps address your question.....

I worked on some projects where this topic was always postponed whenever someone brings it up. The justification was that the project ends by the project delivery. Operations handover is part of future service agreement project. In fact, this creates a lot of stress at the closure point of the project, as the users of the product or service delivered will feel reluctant to accept the project deliverables until they are sure there is a proper handover to them even if it was not part of the project scope.

A solution would be STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT. Never ignore that your deliverable will not be accepted until the users accept it. Once the users are engaged in the project phases, they would feel comfortable that their fears have been taken into account over the different project processes.

One more strategic thing, is to start drafting the service agreement or the handover plan as a parallel project if it was not already in the scope of the current project.