In this article we'll look at business dress rehearsals. 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 the highest level of cutover assurance. 

What are the seven reasons for running dress rehearsals?

1. The project team, users, support staff, third parties and stakeholders will have the highest level of assurance possible before cutover.
2. Issues that may not have been identified in testing will be highlighted in dress rehearsals. (On a major transformation programme, 45 issues were identified in dress rehearsals that were not discovered in standard test phases.)
3. Go/No Go meetings will be more productive.
4. BAU processes will be proven by people that will complete the activities after cutover.
5. Complete end-to-end process timings will be confirmed.
6. Smooth transition to BAU.
7. It is the most effective risk management activity a project can complete.

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.
• She may spot issues with the system or data that have been missed in the test phases.
• Run at least the first week’s BAU activities and additional weeks if possible. (One full month is recommended.)
• Plus any additional priority activities. (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. The core business processes are run exactly as they will be 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 provides assurance on cutover and readiness for go-live.
• Dress rehearsals use, unless there are insurmountable issues, live data.

Data quality assurance is built into all dress rehearsal activities.

Why should you do dress rehearsals?

What are the objectives?

• Prove holistically (end-to-end) the technical solution, business processes, integrations, security configuration, data quality and readiness for go-live.
• Data quality assurance of the end-to-end data flows with production data. This is critical for scenarios that can only be tested with the correct volume of live data.
• Replicate the first days, weeks, months or quarters of BAU before go-live.
• On some projects there may be a requirement to include future activities in the dress rehearsal. An example would be year-end processing six months after going live.
• Data can be prepared to assist with mimicking future activities.
• On most systems the system dates can be advanced, but sometimes keeping the data aligned can become complicated. If the project is going to advance the system date to include future activities in the dress rehearsals, it is good practice to prove the process before the start of the dress rehearsals.

Dress rehearsals are one of the most effective risk management activities a team can undertake on a project. All the dress rehearsals I’ve managed have identified issues that were not found in testing, and some of these would have caused severe problems in BAU.

The main benefits of dress rehearsals are:

• They highlight issues with timings on the end-to-end business process. Test scenarios may be based on assumptions that are incorrect, or they may start at different points in the process.
• Lower level of risk because the critical business scenarios have been proven.
• Fewer BAU issues after go-live.
• Higher productivity from day one after cutover.
• Lower level of resistance to change and higher system acceptance.
• Greater confidence and less stress leading up to the cutover.
• Improved level of support from the super users and the support teams.
• Fewer queries and support calls following cutover.
• Dress rehearsals can improve productivity from the go-live date.

Improved productivity was confirmed on a project for an insurance company. The organisation planned a decrease in productivity for a period of two months. However, the complete department took part in dress rehearsals, and there was no decrease in productivity. One of the big four consultancies audited the project and confirmed that productivity increased from day one.

How are dress rehearsals run?

What are the steps to run business scenario dress rehearsals?

The main activities for dress rehearsals are:

• Agree on the critical business scenarios that will be included in the dress rehearsals. (Additional dress rehearsals can be added. This is to agree on the most important scenarios to ensure they are completed.)
• Agree on the level of end-user participation. (Have as many people as possible in the dress rehearsals. The most successful dress rehearsals have the highest level of participation. One thing you may hit is the perception that a high level of participation will have a considerable management overhead. This isn’t the case. The super users should all take part in the dress rehearsals, and they can help coordinate the activities. In addition, managers will coordinate the activities of the people in their departments.
• Another common assumption is that dress rehearsals will take the same amount of time per person as testing. This isn’t correct; each person will complete the activities they will do in BAU and then hand over to the next person in the process. (This will require coordination, but it isn’t onerous. It is also excellent preparation for go-live. It is possible for people to step in and complete tasks for colleagues. However, you may experience issues with security settings. (Role-based access control.) If people are going to complete tasks for colleagues, ensure their access has been updated.)
• Dress rehearsals are great additions to training. In fact, dress rehearsals highlight any required enhancements to training.
• It is good practice to have the dress rehearsal environment available until the go-live date. The longer it is available, the more familiar people will be with the system, with the resulting benefits.
• Agree on start and end dates.

On projects I’ve managed, dress rehearsals have started at different points before go-live. Many factors will be considered in this decision. However, my recommendation is to start them as early as possible and run them right up to go-live.

Prerequisites for the start of the final phase dress rehearsals are that development has been completed, training is complete, UAT is signed off, the environment build (including the complete security configuration) is complete and production data or data that mirrors production is loaded in the dress rehearsal environment. (Include time in the plan for data quality assurance.)

Remember to leave enough time to delete all the dress rehearsal data and replace it with the production data for go-live.

How are dress rehearsals run?

What are the steps to run business scenario dress rehearsals?

The main activities for dress rehearsals are:

• Agree on the critical business scenarios that will be included in the dress rehearsals. (Additional dress rehearsals can be added. This is to agree on the most important scenarios to ensure they are completed.)
• Agree on the level of end-user participation. (Have as many people as possible in the dress rehearsals. The most successful dress rehearsals have the highest level of participation. One thing you may hit is the perception that a high level of participation will have a considerable management overhead. This isn’t the case. The super users should all take part in the dress rehearsals, and they can help coordinate the activities. In addition, managers will coordinate the activities of the people in their departments.
• Another common assumption is that dress rehearsals will take the same amount of time per person as testing. This isn’t correct; each person will complete the activities they will do in BAU and then hand over to the next person in the process. (This will require coordination, but it isn’t onerous. It is also excellent preparation for go-live. It is possible for people to step in and complete tasks for colleagues. However, you may experience issues with security settings. (Role-Based Access Control.) If people are going to complete tasks for colleagues, ensure their access has been updated.
• Agree on start and end date.

Dress rehearsals are great additions to training. In fact, dress rehearsals highlight any required enhancements to training.

It is good practice to have the dress rehearsal environment available until the go-live date. The longer it is available, the more familiar people will be with the system, with the resulting benefits.

How many people take part?

There are different approaches based on the business process and organisation structure. Please find below three options.

1. All users take part and complete their normal BAU activities. This provides a high level of assurance and reduces support queries after go-live.
2. A group of users from a single department complete the dress rehearsals for all departments. This approach works well if multiple departments have the same business process. Also, dress rehearsals are flexible. Additional departments can be added, or people from different departments can join the original dress rehearsal group.
3. Super users complete activities on behalf of the users in their departments. This isn’t as effective as all users taking part because the super users may not understand some of the intricacies of the process and may also miss issues with the data or process. However, if there are resource issues and users aren’t available, this is still a valuable exercise.

The most successful dress rehearsals have a high level of user involvement.

Dress Rehearsal Project Examples

Media Company

A media company replaced their legacy editorial systems and infrastructure. The project had phased go-lives over an eighteen-month period.

The project was managed using Agile with additional project management governance relating to the infrastructure transformation. The business processes are time critical with process dependencies at each step. Each sprint had key features/deliverables that were mandatory for that phase.

The dress rehearsals highlighted 90 additional issues, and 45 were resolved before go-live. One of the issues was related to the timing of a critical BAU process. The deadline for completing all BAU activities would have been missed on the first day of go-live. This didn’t show up in UAT because the starting point assumed timings. When the complete process was run end-to-end during a dress rehearsal, the issue was discovered. This was resolved, and there were no issues with the timings after go-live.

Insurance Company

A project for an insurance company involved updating the finance system and the introduction of document scanning. Not only did the dress rehearsal activity result in a very uneventful go-live, but productivity also increased from day one. (On most projects there is a period of weeks or months where productivity is reduced following go-live.)

Charity Organisations

A project for a leading charity in London introduced a new system to enhance support for hundreds of remote staff. This included a major cultural change that streamlined or replaced manual processes. There was considerable concern regarding the level of change. Good communications, quality training and dress rehearsals with 95% participation ensured a smooth go-live. The IT Director called a meeting to discuss his concerns about the level of system usage after go-live. He thought the users were continuing with their manual processes because of the low volume of support calls to the Help Desk. In fact, 98% of staff were using the system. (The remainder were on holiday or off ill.) He was very pleased when he found out that everyone was using the system and said that the results proved the benefits of dress rehearsals.

A leading education charity with offices in Milton Keynes and Manchester had a hard deadline for replacement of a critical system. Issues delayed the completion of testing. Dress rehearsals were run in parallel to provide a high level of assurance, and the project was delivered on time.