Change management when consolidating systems
Change management is a key discipline for any consolidation project. A typical consolidation may involve data transformation, merging of data sets, and, frequently, an ITSM application upgrade. This represents a significant range of changes to the data sets that need to be managed. In parallel are the infrastructure, process, and business changes that accompany a consolidation.
A formal change management process is essential. The process should ensure that all changes that can impact the success of the consolidation are reviewed and approved before implementation.
The following points in the project are key for your change management process:
- Identification and migration of customizations
- User acceptance testing
- Operating company synchronization
Identification and migration customizations
As part of the consolidation, you might need to migrate application customizations into the target production system. A package of customizations is created that can be cleanly imported into the target production or target data migration systems.
After this customization package is finalized, put all workflow enhancements under a change freeze on the source and target production systems. Technical, you can add new workflow customizations into the package after this point, but doing so adds significant complexity, risk, and effort to your project.
If you cannot import a workflow change freeze, make sure that no workflow enhancements are permitted after the point at that user acceptance testing starts. The application that the business tests and signs off should be as close as possible to the application that is put into live production usage.
User acceptance testing
After the technical process of migrating data is accomplished, the application undergoes user acceptance testing (UAT). This process should involve the various stakeholders who are asked to verify all features of the application and formally sign off the application as acceptable for production usage. This signoff represents a commitment from the stakeholder and the technical team implementing the upgrade. The stakeholders are stating that they have adequately tested the application. The technical team are committing to delivering an application that matches the one that was tested.
The application presented to the stakeholders for UAT should be as close as possible to the application that will be put into live. Prior to UAT, create a database backup from production and use this data to populate the UAT environment with the latest data set from production as part of an emulated cutover. When you create this backup, put a change freeze on significant configuration changes to the system.
The definition of significant configuration changes differ depending on the usage of modules and the appetite your business has for risk. The scope of the change freeze should include areas of data that will undergo complex transformation or manual reconciliation, or areas where there are high levels of complexity such as Service Request Management or Service Level Management.
Operating company synchronization
Some consolidations will include synchronization of operating company data as described in Merging-operating-company-data. This complex operation might involve manual reconciliation of data. If manual reconciliation is required, operating company data changes are typically deployed to the target production environment prior to the cutover. For example, support groups, people, their associated support group membership, and permissions may be transferred from the source BMC Helix ITSM system. After this data is migrated, you must update any further changes to this operating company data in the source and the target BMC Helix ITSM systems. Place these changes under change control so that you can manage the changes properly. Similarly, also place major revisions to operating company data under a change freeze.