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Risk Management: Tips and Tricks to Mitigate Risk During an Audited Upgrade with Microsoft Dynamics GP - Part 5

by Gloria Braunschweig
President, Dorian Enterprises, Computeration, Inc.

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

In the first four posts you saw the 26 steps involved, the goals, developing prototype criteria, testing criteria and the fall-back position, the groundwork, and phases 1 and 2. So, what can go wrong?

First, let's recap the client's situation: 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 information we learned from the upgrade 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.

What can go wrong...

Despite the project planning and management, documentation, and teleconferencing, things did go awry. For brevity and humor:

  • While inserting one of the routers into the rack, our engineer dropped it. Cisco provided an immediate replacement.
  • A major local telecommunications carrier, responsible for the handoff of the line in downtown Portland, sent a technician without appropriate access documentation to the hub site.
  • Another technician had to plug in the hop from one carrier to the other, but the cable proved to be bad and was eventually replaced.
  • Taking 170 hours, we tested every hop, router, and switch. The local telecommunications carrier advised the line to downtown Portland was ...

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About Gloria Braunschweig

Gloria has experience across the full spectrum of business operations and management. Decades of experience are documented in the book Rapid Implementation, establishing Gloria as a specialists using Microsoft SQL tools for implementation, integration, and business intelligence related to Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Gloria writes and presents on lean implementation concepts and business management systems for small and mid-size businesses. 

More about Gloria Braunschweig