Case Studies in Infrastructure Change Management

Chapter 4. Preflight Checklist

The lessons learned here are specific to each of the case studies examined, but may be modified to fit your individual needs. We’ve also listed 10 general guidelines to keep in mind when implementing a large-scale infrastructure change at your organization. Regardless of the size of your organization, applying these key takeaways may help mitigate the challenges of rolling out a large infrastructure change:

1. Establish a core team (if it doesn’t yet exist) to manage the infrastructure change in the company

   Staff the effort with the right people from the beginning to ensure projects smoothly launch and land. At a minimum, there should be full-time engineers (to build code for the migration tools and assist with answering questions), technical project managers (who facilitate communication, tracking, and meeting deadlines), and an executive sponsor (who helps push this change at the top, to ensure it gets prioritized).

2. Pilot with the more technically savvy, low-risk customers first

   These customers are more aware of what features they need and can provide useful feedback to improve the migration before a large rollout. In addition, try to select the customers that are considered to be low risk (i.e., unexpected issues would not stop operations for them).

3. Understand trade-offs up front as much as possible

   While establishing a core team is critical, it’s not always possible to have dedicated people working on the migration project or, perhaps, the ...