Following the successful migration, the IT room migration team should handover Business As Usual (BAU) management and support to the BAU support organisation.
BAU
Business as usual, the normal execution of standard functional operations within an organization, forms a possible contrast to projects or programmes which might introduce change.
Handover to BAU
The handover to BAU process will be triggered when the project scope is identified to cover the handover of the build environment to the support organisation. The support organisation may be internal or external. This process will be activated during the planning phase of the project and may span across the succeeding phases of execution and closure.
The responsibilities of the IT room migration team during the handover to BAU could be for example:
- Preparation of the project plan addressing all requirements and timelines of handover to the support organisation.
- Devise handover plan in accordance with contract.
- Prepare or help the support organisation in preparation of support manuals, documents and other deliverables required for handover.
- HLD, LLD, architecture diagram, test plan and standard operation procedure, AS-IS build document, physical location in IT room pictorial depiction of IT room, configuration details are examples of documents that project team will share with support organisation based on the project plan and specific requirements of the project.
- Provide early life support for a maximum duration of 2 weeks.
- Ensure that the support organisation is updated on known errors and issues.
The responsibilities of the BAU support organisation during the handover could be for example:
- Timely allocation of skilled resources to facilitate knowledge acquisition as per project plan.
- Engage the key support members in the build phase form an appropriate stage so that knowledge of infrastructure can be attained.
- Acquire knowledge from IT room migration team as required to manage the build components or environment.
- Monitor and manage the environment.
- Coordinate with IT room migration team to resolve environment issues to a maximum of 2 weeks after completion of build phase unless faced with repeat outages due to technical reasons like performance, availability issues.
- Ensure the support organisation is engaged appropriately to facilitate a smooth handover.
Tasks
- Define support and operations model.
- Assign IT room migration resources to work with BAU service delivery.
- Complete handover to BAU checklist.
Hints and tips
- Engage the service delivery organisation early in the IT room migration and involve them wherever possible, for example in build work, testing (shut-down/restart), and migration.
- Understand service delivery requirements and their role in maintaining customer SLA’s. They will have to run the target systems for a long time after the IT room migration has completed.
Activity output
- Document support and operations model.
- Completed handover to BAU checklist.
About the Author
