Cutover planning is critical for successful transition to BAU. In this course you will learn how to plan and manage successful cutovers.

Overview 

It is best practice to agree on the implementation approach from the start of the project. The amount of effort required to plan this will depend on the business objectives, the complexity of the project, the go-live deadline, the number of implementation options, and other factors.

On this course you’ll learn about cutover principles, actions, and risk management.

This course is designed to help business stakeholders and IT teams understand:

• Implementation prerequisites.
• Cutover impact on operations.
• Freeze points. (When the existing system, or parts of the system, will no longer be used.)
• Quality assurance.
• Dependencies.
• Key dates.
• Risk management.
• How to prepare a cutover plan at the appropriate level of granularity.
• Activities for a professional handover to BAU support.
• Cutover risk management.
• The benefits of cutover dress rehearsals and the limitations of paper-based exercises.

This course covers the key principles of IT cutover management and is delivered by an instructor that developed cutover standards for a major UK bank.

Course objectives

 The course aims to help you learn how to:

• Prepare and prove cutover plans.
• Communicate effectively to all stakeholders during cutover.
• Lead on the preparation of the cutover strategy. This can impact all aspects of a project and should be agreed as early in the project lifecycle as possible.
• Manage cutover risks and develop contingency plans.
• Include typical prerequisite activities in your cutover plan.
• Explain the importance of objective risk assessment and how to use a tool to determine the level of risk at any point in the project lifecycle.
• Prepare for and manage Go/No Go meetings.
• Prepare cutover readiness criteria slides.
• Monitor the cutover plan.
• Estimate the level of resource required for cutover activities.
• Manage third parties during cutover.
• Work with key business stakeholders to agree on freeze points in order to minimise the impact on your organisation.

Who is this course for?

This course is designed for cutover and project/programme managers. 

It will be valuable for PMO teams, business stakeholders, IT directors, managers, support teams, quality assurance managers, test teams, data managers, security teams, or anyone involved in IT projects.  

Learning outcomes

 At the end of the course you should:

• Be able to plan and manage cutover plans.
• Have the knowledge to minimise and manage cutover risk.
• Be able to include contingency in your cutover plan.
• Be able to prepare a cutover communication plan and send effective communication to all stakeholders.
• Know how to prepare for Go/No Go meetings using a standard format.
• Be able to use a standard tool that provides objective risk information.
• Know how to prepare escalation communication and distribute it if issues are encountered during the cutover.
• Understand the importance of quality assurance and know how to include this in your plans and the cutover runbook.
• Be able to work with the business stakeholders to minimise cutover risk. This includes agreeing on business process freeze points.
• Understand the importance of working with the support teams and including them in the cutover dress rehearsals.
• Understand the role of superusers in dress rehearsals and BAU support.