Risk Management: How to Mitigate Risk During an Audited Upgrade with Microsoft Dynamics GP - Part 2

This 6-part series of Risk Management Tips and Tricks chronicles the two large change management projects we undertook for the same client this year.

The first project upgraded Microsoft Dynamics GP version 10.0 to 2010 and the second project migrated their entire network infrastructure from one hosting center to another. The upgrade proved valuable in developing the auditable criteria for the change management of the hosting center migration. The information we learned from the upgrade also assisted in estimating the scope of the network migration project. We recognized that the significantly more complex network migration with numerous vendors and participants would take many more hours of work for communication, scheduling, contract negotiations, and documentation. Project management for the upgrade was 15% of the overall services budget; project management was 30% of the migration services budget.

In the last post you saw the 26 steps involved in doing audited change management for the upgrade. In this installment, we'll look at documenting the goals, developing prototype and testing criteria and preparing the fall-back position.

Developing, Planning, Testing and Fallback

Documenting the goals, objectives, schedule, resources, and costs: The primary goals were to conduct a smooth upgrade to Dynamics GP 2010 with little disruption to users and to provide a system compatible with new technology containing hardware, operating systems, and database. In addition, the customer wanted to enable users with new functionality within the application.

Developing prototype criteria: We surveyed and documented the existing system to identify what would change, particularly modified forms and reports plus third-party products, and we also screenshot all module setup forms. This customer has 14 company databases, so we developed a checklist and set a clerk to work for several ...