Please find the course outline below, followed by information on module one.

Course Outline

Welcome to the dress rehearsal course.

Module One

• Overview of dress rehearsals.
• Principles of dress rehearsals.
• Why you should run dress rehearsals.

Module Two

• Why should you run dress rehearsals?
• What are the objectives?
• What are the benefits?

Module Three

• Dress rehearsal objectives.
• Benefits of dress rehearsals. User participation.
• Running dress rehearsals.

Module Four

• Dress rehearsal challenges.
• Common dress rehearsal misconceptions.

Module Five

• Dress rehearsal prerequisites.
• Planning business scenario dress rehearsals.
• The importance of user participation.
• Running dress rehearsals.
• Measuring success.
• Case study of a dress rehearsal for a media company.

Module Six

• Cutover dress rehearsals overview and principles.
• Steps to run cutover dress rehearsals.
• How to leverage cutover dress rehearsal results.

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Welcome to the dress rehearsal course

Dress rehearsals reduce risk substantially, and they do more than any other activity to prepare the organisation for go-live. They can be included in any project, work with all methodologies, and provide a high level of cutover assurance.

We’ll discuss two types of dress rehearsals: business scenario dress rehearsals and cutover dress rehearsals.

The objective of this course is to give you:

• An understanding of business and cutover dress rehearsals and the value they bring to a project. (They aren’t another test phase.)
• The knowledge required to allow you to plan and run successful dress rehearsals.

Let’s start with business dress rehearsals, and then we’ll look at cutover dress rehearsals.

What are business scenario dress rehearsals?

In this activity, users complete core business processes in an isolated environment to provide the highest level of assurance for cutover and BAU. The business decides on the key business scenarios with advice from the project team, if required.

What are the principles of dress rehearsals? 

• Users run their critical business processes in a dedicated environment to prove readiness for go-live.
• The mindset of the dress rehearsal participants is that this is the first day of go-live.
• The business scenarios are agreed upon, and the users run them exactly as they will in BAU.
• Test scripts are not used. 
• The dress rehearsal sequence is based on business priority and level of risk. The most critical ones are completed first.
• Please note that multiple scenarios may be run in parallel.
• Super users assist the participants, and the support team is on call in case there are any issues.
• People responsible for the role after go-live should complete the activities in the dress rehearsal. They could identify system or data problems that the test phases overlooked. 
• Run at least the first week’s BAU activities and additional weeks if possible. One full month is recommended, plus any additional priority activities such as critical reports, etc.
• Dress rehearsals are not a rerun of UAT or any other test phase.
• Ideally, production data should be used for the dress rehearsals to ensure data quality and to confirm the validity of the dress rehearsals.
• Run real-life scenarios using live data wherever possible. For example, processing a full day’s worth of transactions.
• Roles and permissions are validated to ensure they will support BAU processing.
• Run integrations using the production schedules and BAU volume data to prove timing.

How do business scenario dress rehearsals differ from testing?

The key differences are:

• The users do not follow a test script. They run the core business processes exactly as they will in BAU. The users complete them using knowledge gained in training.
• There is a much higher level of user participation compared to test phases.
• The scope of dress rehearsals is much broader than testing. This activity provides assurance on cutover and readiness for go-live.
• Dress rehearsals use live data unless there are insurmountable issues.
• Data quality assurance is built into all dress rehearsal activities. 

Summary

You will learn valuable insights and guidance throughout the course. You will gain a deep understanding of the best practices for conducting successful dress rehearsals.