Transition Project Initiation

Consider the following while initiating a transition project:

• Complete the Transition Governance Checklist to determine which activities and tasks (from UPM) are required, and review considerations if any.
• In addition, as transition projects are high pressure projects with tight deadlines, setting-up a secure ‘War Room’ is recommended. The transition progress and major activities can be captured on the walls of this war room. Typically, the war room should be at the location where the vast amount of transition activity is taking place.

Contract Summary and Contractual Event Calendar

While reviewing the contractual baselines in UPM, it is recommended to create a Contractual Event Calendar (listing all events) and a Contract Summary to provide an overview of the contract to stakeholders. Specific contract milestones for transition and the associated mechanics for handling these milestones must be identified. These activities are usually undertaken by the global Contract Support Services (CSS) group who are specialists in this area. In order to identify transition specific and ongoing contract milestones / requirements, the contract must be reviewed to identify events that occur either once or on a periodic basis.

A Contractual Event Calendar and mechanics for handling each identified contract event may be created:

• Identify the preparation required.
• Identify who needs to prepare for the event including client staff, third parties and Capgemini personnel.
• Determine how much notice is required before the event.

Produce a Contract Summary document in order to educate staff who have an interest in the commercial relationship between the organizations, or to provide an overview when on-boarding new staff.

Start-Up Phase: 02 - Planning And Financial Management Stream

Transition Approach And Plan

While planning for a Transition project and creating a Project Plan (Transition Plan) as per UPM, it is recommended to consider the below mentioned activities for Transition project planning.

• Since transition projects are driven by very tight schedules, it is advisable to drive the planning effort for transitions via workshops or multiple meetings. This helps to achieve common vision and commitment of resources for a successful transition. It also helps to capture changes if any and its impact on budget, schedule, risks, etc.
• The Transition Readiness Acceptance Criteria, which will be used for sign off by the Capgemini Delivery Manager (Run organization), should be finalized.
• There should be collaboration with all work streams to obtain their findings. Where agreed, the services should be scheduled into waves based upon a number of considerations such as risk, technologies, skill availability, and knowledge exchange requirements. Refining the transition plan (including any waves) will be an iterative process based on the scope of services being delivered. Small transitions such as a simple Build to Run may be accomplished in one wave (“big bang”) while moderate or larger transitions or Build to Runs with multiple releases may require “waves” by bringing on services incrementally to reduce risk and provide a higher level of service.

For developing a wave strategy for the Transition Plan, a detailed level of WBS must be completed and reviewed (as suggested in the UPM). In addition care should be taken to:

• Consider any in-flight projects and their impact on the wave planning.
• Consider connectivity, bandwidth and any security requirements.
• Build waves into the transition plan ensuring all common services are implemented prior or with the first wave (Service Desk, SLAs, tools, processes, etc.).In planning to move infrastructure focus on identifying which pieces of equipment are most important to the business and where there might be a single point of failure.
• Prioritize the service groups based on interdependencies, complexity, criticality and risk abatement. Typically service groups that are low complexity, low criticality, low risk, and have no interdependencies will be planned in an early wave and the other groups will go in later waves.
• Review the draft wave plan with the client and other stakeholders to ensure that any business or operational considerations have been addressed. For example, maybe the SAP implementation has to go before the server migration because there is a planned hardware upgrade.

Once the initial transition plan has been completed, all risks, issues and assumptions should be updated to reflect the waves in the plan. Finally review and the plan with service delivery teams, client and other suppliers to ensure everyone understands their role and commitment

Start-Up Phase: 03 - Resource Management Stream

Staffing

Staffing for a transition project would be carried out as per the Resource Management Stream in UPM. In addition to this, it is recommended to ensure:

• An experienced transition manager (addressed as Engagement Manager (Transition), at the appropriate EM certification level for the complexity of the assignment is assigned to the project (typically done during the sales cycle).
• The cost model (from the bid team) is reviewed to determine the budget allocated for transition staff and the roles supported by the budget.
• Escalations are carried out where required roles are not filled, as transitions are on very tight timescales.
• Terms of reference for each stream lead are confirmed.

The above activities can be done using the Staffing Plan.

Execution Phase: 01 – Project Governance Stream

Operational Readiness Acceptance

In addition to obtaining sign-offs from the customer, sign-off must also be obtained from the Delivery Manager who has a vested interest in a successful transition. Sign-off will generally be achieved by meeting the ORA criteria agreed at the start of transition. However, in some situations transition, delivery and the client may mutually agree that operational readiness need only meet a subset of these criteria in order for the service to commence live operation. For example, it may be agreed that non-critical criteria will be met within a short period of time following go-live. In such situations, actions to address the omitted criteria, a RACI, budget and the work plans required to complete the activities should be agreed before ORA sign-off is given. 

Close-Down Phase: 01 – Project Governance Stream

Transition Project Closure

At the end of the transition project, the end review of project as per UPM will be carried out. While doing so, it is recommended to assess and document the key transition activities to ensure all stakeholders understand and agree on the end-state of the transition. These can be either documented in the Project Close-Down Report (as per UPM) or a separate Transition Project Closure Report may be created.
The activities to be reviewed and documented include:

• Project Completion Statement : a brief description on “what” was transitioned into service delivery
• Review Of Project Objectives : a review of the transition objectives as described in the PGP or transition approach and the status of these objectives
• Review Of Deliverables/Products: a review of the transition deliverables as detailed in the transition plan and PGP. Ensure all deliverables are completed and accepted or mitigation plans are in place to address any gaps.
• Review Of Change Requests : any change in scope that was documented during the transition is reviewed and the status on each change is confirmed by the service delivery team
• Review Of Assumptions From PGP : all assumptions that are documented in the PGP are reviewed and re-validated if necessary
• Review Of Outstanding Risks & Issues: review all outstanding risks or issues and ensure mitigation plans are in place and any required actions to close issues are agreed to and turned over to the service delivery team.
• Performance against Budget: review the transition budget and confirm that performance against the budget was acceptable.
• Conduct an assessment to capture lessons learned and Transition Best Practices in collaboration with the sales team, the transition team and the delivery team. The assessment is intended to focus on areas where the transition provided value, where gaps were identified and where the transitions could be made more effective in delivery or in reducing costs by altering our approach, eliminating non-value added activities, etc. Identify areas of improvement for the transition team methods and templates.