Determine Cutover Plan

Use

The purpose of this task is to plan system cutover activities in the appropriate sequence to ensure that preparatory steps are complete and that the right people are available when required. The cutover plan covers activities for setting up and initializing the production environment. The plan must cover application data, such as master data, transaction data, as well as customizing and repository objects.

Procedure

  1. Create cutover plan.
    Prepare a cutover plan to migrate the system and organization to a production system. This plan focuses on the activities, tasks, and timing of the final days of effort. The main benefit is a plan to ensure a smooth transition to production. Referring to this plan if difficulties arise can serve as a guide to action. The cutover plan includes a checklist that reviews points of readiness, and provides the basis for approval to progress.
    The cutover plan schedule and timing must cover the procedures to close legacy systems, if any, and to enter data in the new system. A pause in cutover activities may be necessary to resolve last-minute problems. Consider operations in other time zones.
    The plan must include:

The written cutover plan must be reviewed and approved by the project manager, core project team leads, and key company senior management. The plan must be presented to the steering committee in summary form.

  1. Create a final checklist.
    This final checklist reviews points of readiness and provides the signal to progress.
  1. Create a contingency plan.
    The cutover plan must include a contingency plan for delays. The contingency plan must address how long (in hours or days) the new production system cutover can progress but be stopped, and legacy systems restored. It is standard practice to have a point of no return for making the new system operative. After a few hours or days, it may not be possible to convert the business operations back to the legacy system. However, it is important to consider this option.
  1. Determine conversion timing and schedule.
    Determine the timing and schedule of the final data transfer (conversion). Estimate how long it can take for each type of conversion (master data and transaction data) including executing the data conversion programs, and time for manual data conversion. When must the data be backed up? Determine who reconciles the data and when. Determine how much time is required to rerun programs if programs abort. Can programs be restarted only from the beginning?
  1. Test operation of the new system.
    The final stage of the conversion process and system readiness check is to test the operation of the production system, ensure that transactions are working, and that users have appropriate system access. This can be done through display transactions and reports, or live transactions.
    The cutover plan can provide for an initial start-up of the new system before most users sign on. For example, a power user can enter the first transactions to ensure that everything is operating as designed.

Result

The cutover plan is determined and communicated to everybody involved.