Chapter 12. Transitioning a System into Service

Your project team has been working hard for months, perhaps even years, and the system under development is taking shape. Perhaps, you've even demonstrated some releases to your customer, which have been well received. As you approach the end of the Construction phase, the Initial Operational Capability (IOC) milestone seems easily within your grasp.

This is definitely a major achievement from the perspective of the development team. But from the perspective of the user, the work is far from finished. Indeed, several important tasks remain as the project enters the Transition phase. This chapter discusses the major tasks that receive attention in the Transition phase. It begins by discussing staffing considerations. Another activity may be a partial deployment of the IOC. The chapter continues with the kinds of development tasks that are typically performed during the Transition phase. This includes data migration, which is often a major task when the new system replaces a legacy system. We will discuss managing end-user expectations at this critical point in the project lifecycle. This involves leveraging the relationships developed during requirements elicitation to ease the system into production. Finally, training of end users is discussed.