Merger/acquisition - systems go-live happened and now we've got the blues
Anonymous
Has anyone lived through this sort of thing and got any tips for me?
How to manage that sticky period a few weeks after systems go live when the technical people get asked to move on but the business people are not happy as things aren't working properly.
Relations are a bit strained and increasingly the business feels that the technical reosurces are too scarce and do not understand how seriously business success is being impacted.
We are trying to secure the ongoing resources we need to fix teething issues and also have daily calls to review and prioritise issues, but what else can we do to help ride this out successfully? Saving Changes...
If the implementation of this system was a project assuming it was the transition period from project into the live environment should have ensured that the business was part of all initial testing and final testing sign-off. A handover of the operational system from Project over to IT Operations [go live] should have been endorsed, signed-off by IT Managers responsible and be accountable. How could a system go live without approval from the business and IT! The best way to ensure you get a fix is to raise a Change Request documenting the system requirements\changes, to be approved by relevant key players emphasing the critical impact to your business.
Start communicating the business concerns and how serious it is if the fixes are not resolved quickly. These are lessons to be learned. Saving Changes...
Hans RobbersSenior Director| SalesforceVlissingen, Netherlands
I do agree with Vasoula and would like to add set up acceptance criteria for business and IT hand over. Both have to accept the system and only after acceptance resources can be released.
Secondly classify your errors and agree on a turn around time per error category. Cosmetics can be fixed within minth after going live and might a good practice for the IT organisation to get used to the system whilst road blocks need to handled asap and will be the responsibility of the project team
hopes this helps
Hans Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Thanks both - I think maybe we need some checklist for acceptance before release of resources as you suggest.
There was a lot of testing and business signoff before go live - most of the issues are data-related and we were limited to a small time window for release (it involved shutting the warehouse, making the website unavailable, having a period where orders could not be processed). Releasing later wasn't really a viable business option,
So, the amount of data in the test environment got compromised as project delays impacted our time left to set up that test environment. Therefore it was an explicit concern before go-live that limited data would mean failure to test everything we would like in a meaningful fashion, hence the problems now after go live.
We are trying to make sure we categorise both the issues and where the solution will come from (IT vs business) and that the list of issues does not turn into a longer term wishlist, but its a low point right now in terms of morale all round,.
I think we need to make clearer assurances that we won't redeploy key people until its right to do so but if I am missing anything else that might help please let me know your thoughts! Saving Changes...
