Transitioning to ongoing support - the icing on the project management cake

All projects have to come to an end. The end of the project is a beginning of a new phase in the project life cycle. Ongoing support can be seen as the icing on the project cake, after all the ingredients have been prepared, mixed together and cooked to perfection.




Most of the points here are more related to technical projects but are still relevant to other areas too.
The process of handing over and the quality of ongoing support is a delicate operation and is equally important as the previous phases of the project. A number of areas should be considered in this process:
  • Current skill sets of supporting staff
  • Adequate resources to sustain ongoing support
  • Sufficient reference documentation
  • Proper ramp up planning
  • Align expectations of business partners.
Current Skill Sets of Supporting Staff

An evaluation of the current skill sets of the supporting staff needs to be done to determine if :
  • additional training is required for technical and business skill sets are required
  • amount of time required for ramping up technical and business skill sets is sufficient
  • additional staffing resources are required
  • additional funding is required

A lot of times this evaluation is missed or over looked and will make the ongoing support a challenge. Gaps in current skill sets, if not addressed before the cut over from the project team to the on going support team will inadvertently cause drops in service level and customer experience. Each area is inter-dependent on the other ie if additional training is required for a specific technical skill set the the amount of time required for ramping will need to be increased as well as additional funding will be required.

Additional staffing resources may require additional funding but may be preferable to the amount of time that will be required for additional training for existing support team members. Each factor needs to be given equal consideration as each will need to be balanced out against the each other.

Adequate Resources For On Going Support

 Resources that need to be considered are :
  • Team members
  • Hardware - servers and network capacities, additional PCs
  • Software - support applications
  • Budget
  • Extended Team
The last one, the extended team, is the one frequently overlooked. No application or project ever operates alone. Normally you will need to engage resources outside of your direct team to interact with. Down stream and up stream systems are some areas which need to be considered. Issues arising may be due to issues occurring in other systems and not necessary directly from the system that the error is being reported. As such, we need to ensure the correct engagements with the extended teams is done early on to ensure a successful transition.

Will continue with the other 3 in my next posting later in the week.


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