History Request on Go-Live Weekends

joy_fernandez

joy_fernandez

Well Known Member
5-11-01
Everyone:

Our company is planning on going live October 1. We are goint to do the
"Big Bang" theory, and I was wondering if some of you would share your
stories of how your week prior and week after go-live went. Also, if you
had it to do again, what would you do different?

We would really appreciate and enjoy reading your stories.

Oracle 8.1.5, WinNT, Xe SP15, Citrix MetaFrame

Joy Fernandez
JDE System Administrator
830-868-5035
[email protected]
 
Joy :

a) Test your backup and restore strategies and estimate disaster recovery
times.

Sebastian


B7321 to Xe, NT/W2K/SQL
JAS, Interoperability
MCDBA,MCP+I,MCSE,Citrix Admin
[email protected]
Grupo ASSA - Application Software SA
 
Joy,

We just went live on GL/AP on April 30th.
Week before was relatively smooth, the weekend was spent copying the tables,
task IDs/views, etc from PY to PD.
Built full packages in PD, deployed to workstations/servers.
Changed profiles to allow access to PD environment.
Double checked printers in PD environment.

The only glitch we had was when the Actual AP Check came in, it was
different than the sample they provided. So a quick change to the
AP check format in DV, promoted to PY for additional testing,
then passed to PD and presto was able to cut checks.

Wade Wells
XE, Win2K on DEP/ENT servers, SQL2K
XU1, and SP15 with additional one-offs 002, 006, & 007.
 
JDE offers "readiness assessements" services. (I'm not getting any commissions from this. :)). A consultant who has never been onsite will come in to see if things have been set up properly and if you are ready to go live. It's a great way to see if anything has been missed.



C Ho
Intermediate Programmer/Analyst
B7322 SP 12.4
AS/400 coexistant with SQL Server 7.0
Sandbox: Xe AS/400 coexistant with CO on SQL 7.0
 
5-11-01
Wade:

How many user do you have? Do you have more than one site?

Joy
 
We went live in 2 chunks, GL - AP - job cost, then inventory and purchasing
later, then FA much later.

The CNC folks had not much to do over the weekend.

Most stuff we dealt with was transaction cutoff and loading data, such as
open POs, open vouchers, GL balances, etc. Normal stuff for any cutover.
Have all your operating people key all their Friday transactions in old
system, then post GL, get final old-system balances, copy data to GL in OW.
Get closing inventory unit balances, moving average costs, etc. Determine
what PO lines are open, what AP invoices are not vouched, what AP invoices
are vouched and not paid and need to be keyed or copied to OW. Try to
minimize number of open POs and AP vouchers.

Application folks had questions to answer, like "why doesn't it work the
same in prod and in CRP?". Here and there. Before you go up, check all the
processing options in prod, make sure are same as in CRP/what you want.

We put in, weeks earlier, summary entries in GL to get 12 months history of
monthly account balances.

Monday, have your apps people looking over the shoulders of your users, have
them look at UTB and see that records look OK, answer questions, work on
error messages (count on a few).

Count on the real-world volume breaking things that worked in testing.
Example: did you test a 20-line inventory issue? Or 20-line AP voucher?

Count on finding that a few processes that your operating people were
satisfied with in testing, are not working to their satisfaction now, or not
working at all: they were not really tested. So count on having to scramble
to invent or change a process, and thus having a backlog of transactions to
process for a while.
 
Joy,

It was a small install. Maybe 50 users total, with maybe 3 in financials.
It is a single site install.

Wade
 
Hi Joy,

I've tried both.

My first implementation was a horror story. The week leading upto go live we
were still trying to get some of our major processes working correctly. We
had under-done the user training leading up to Go-Live and therefore new we
were going to have significant support issues in the first month of
operation.

We did not have a plan in place to review the transaction that were input
during the first couple of weeks. It was a month before we realised that we
had orders "stuck" in the system. Some simple reports run each night would
have highlighted some issues early before they became huge problems.

While we had been running the integrity reporting our Finance guys didn't
really understand them.

My advice is to make sure you over-do the user training. Manage the users
expectations. Make sure they understand whats going to happen and what they
should do when the unexpected happens. This needs to be a formal process,
not a quick chat.

Understand exactly what transactions are going to flow into the system and
when. Have some kind of verification process in place.

I have just completed my second implementation at another company where we
have gone live with AP and GL as phase 1. We spent two months training users
almost on a daily basis. We did internal Foundation training which was a
half day course. We did specific job training for each department which was
a two day course. We then did specific training for department managers
which was a half day course. We printed our own certificates which we handed
out to the users when they completed each course. Not only did this provide
the users with training but because it was done in a very formal way it also
gave them the confidence that we new what we were doing. We took a select
group of users, 1 or 2 from each department, and did extra training with
them to generate a team of Key Users. On the week of Go-Live the team walked
around with stickers on the shirts saying "Ask me how". Every user new that
they had a Key User in their department they could ask for help, they also
new who else within the project team they could seek help from.

The first week of Go-Live at this company was extremely quiet from a problem
perspective. Some of this was due to the amount of training we had done, but
most of it was because there was a smaller group of people and transactions
that had to be supported.

Would I do another Big Bang? It depends on where the company is coming from,
the number of users, number of locations, number of transactions and how
many drugs were available. It would never be my choice to go big bang but
sometimes you don't get the choice.

Good luck.

Regards

Lee Richards
Chief Technology Officer
Blackmores Ltd
 
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