3 Weeks from go live

So we are less than three weeks form go live on the project. Amazingly now is when everybody is starting to remember things that need to be done that they failed to mention when the project was planned. Fortunately on this project we have some contingency time to deal with most of these. The reason we have the contigency is that we were able to speed up the initial testing to finishe a week earlier than planned. By pushing hard early, we gave ourselves the breathing room to deal with other issues and risks.

3 Weeks from go live

As we get closer to the go live date, now is the time to finalize the production support plan for after go live. Part of this will include meeting with the vendor to review support documents and procedures.

3 Weeks from go live

As we get closer to go live we are double checking evrything during our final UAT. Although our error count is very low so far we are repeating several test cases with different data as a secondary check.

3 Weeks from go live

Monday Morning - Ramping up UAT today. PM focus is the go live plan. The application is a vendor package that is customized for the client's specific needs and business. Thus we need to combine our go live list with the clients.

3 Weeks from go live

Starting this week I am going to keep a running list of the things I am doing as a PM to get the project ready for delivery. I am hoping that this may be useful to some of you when you plan your go live events for IT projects.

The project is currently on schedule with two defects reported during system test, Both defects are minor so we will start UAT Monday on time. This project has a significant data conversion component and the first full mock conversion will run tomorrow so we can test the data Monday.

My major tasks for Monday include finishing the first draft of the go live plan for the weekend of go live.
Stay tuned, more on Monday

The Ten Fallacies of Project Management

# 4 - You can make up time

It is very difficult to make up time on a project. Once a major task misses a milestone date by more than a few days there really is no way to fully make up the lost time. The reason is that the work effort for the remaining tasks doesn't change. Even with overtime or extra resources you will probably only recoup part of the time. Check out the Project Right Track web page tip of the week at http://bit.ly/9hdM9H for more on this issue

The Ten Fallacies of Project Management - #5

I can add more resources

On IT porjects that are behind schedule adding more resources often does not woirk because typically the new resources are contractors who do not know your systems or applications. One way to mitigate this is to build a relationship with a consulting firm who will invest in getting some of their esources familar with your company.