So, how does a Transitional project look with Barefoot Data Transitional Services?
No two situations are the same, but based on experience I see 4 phases to a transition project:
- Phase 1: Learning the environment
- Phase 2: Configuration of Monitoring
- Phase 3: Maintenance
- Phase 4: Roll-off and handover
NOTE: When migrating your company to MicroStrategy, you may only need me involved in the Phase 1 and Phase 4 aspects of this transition. This document is mainly focused on the other two types of transitions.
Phase 1: Learning
Type of Work: Fulltime
Duration: Short term (5-10 days on average)
Location: Onsite ideally, dependent on location and current situation
In this phase the goal is to understand the environment, and get all of the necessary information to take it over and manage it going forward. Typical tasks will involve:
- discuss with any remaining technical team members
- Do a full environment review
- read and catalogue any existing documentation
- get all connectivity information for components of the business intelligence environment from database to MicroStrategy servers
- Compile a list of all remaining staff with connection to components of the environment, and helpdesk numbers
Phase 2: Configuration of monitoring
Type of Work: Fulltime
Duration: Short term (5-10 days on average)
Location: Onsite ideally, dependent on location and current situation
The goal of this phase is to make maintaining the old system easier with limited interaction, and to attempt to anticipate possible issues before they become visible. This is also an opportunity to re-enforce all that was learned in the previous phase. Typical tasks include:
- Automating system checks and user activity
- Setup alert emails for all subscribed cube updates and report sending
- Prepare automated Integrity Manager checks of essential report SQL
- Set up simple reporting on dataloads to confirm consistency with regards to amount of data being loaded
- Create documentation of environment for management by others
Phase 3: Maintenance
Type of Work: Parttime
Duration: Long term (in terms of realtime, ideally low actual of worked hours)
Location: Remote ideally, with specific pre-planned onsite work
This phase is the primary work. During this phase the consultant will manage the environment and fix issues as they come up. The goal is to maintain current reporting, not to develop (any large scale new reporting would be a separate contract and planning). Typical tasks include:
- Issue handling
- Upgrades or machine modifications where necessary
- Regular meeting schedule based on number of hours spent and realtime
- Regular review of automated system alerting
- Weekly monitoring of usage of environment to determine report migration, activity of users, etc.
Phase 4: roll-off
Type of Work: Mixed Parttime and Fulltime
Duration: Pre-planned time, very dependent on the needs of the client
Location: Mixed onsite and offsite, ideally
Every transition project must have an end date and an end plan. In this phase we focus on assisting in migrating to new solution or situation. Typical tasks include:
- Knowledge sharing and handover of all relevant information to new internal staff or new tool consultants
- System decommissioning (where appropriate) to smoothly shutdown the old Business Intelligence environment.
Documentation
In order to have the consulting services off of the project fully, as soon as is possible, clear and full documentation is necessary for the environment. It’s important that everything is together in a single location, and logically organized.
- The old system, reporting, scheduling, etc. will be fully documented and passed on to the full time employees.
- A full operation manual will be created for the environment to make it easier to involve others in operation of the environment as necessary.
- All existing documentation will be catalogued and organized.
Additional information
As required, I reserve the right to bring in other resources to assist, but any work will be done under my supervision, and management. In addition, one of my first goals in a new environment is ensuring a strong backup process is in place.