Mike Cromwell

Welcome back to Whiteboard Wednesday. My name is Mike Cromwell.

Brian DeVault

I’m Brian DeVault.

Mike Cromwell

And today we’re here to talk about the eighth tenet of project management. So for those who’ve been tuning in, thanks so much for tuning in and watching the episodes about project management. We’ve got some great feedback from those watching and we’re now on the homestretch.

Mike Cromwell

So we’re talking about today the eighth tenet, which is handing off the long term support. So your team and all your team’s hard work and efforts are completed at this point. You’re about to go do the victory lap, so walk us through the victory lap.

Brian DeVault

All right. So basically, this is the part where we’re transitioning from the project team to the operations team or the people that are actually going to deliver the service. Right. So from a project perspective, we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got a few things established. So we’ve got to make sure No. One, that the client knows how to request support. What does that process like?

Brian DeVault

Is it Web based? Is it email based? Is it telephone based? Is it all of the above? They need to know all of those things and make sure that they’re clear and they have a document that outlines that process. They’re going to want to communicate that internally. Right. So they want to communicate that via email or via hard copy or what have you so that all their staff knows how to request support. So very important. Also, I’m going to jump down to dates real quick.

Brian DeVault

So the date has to coincide with the communication about how to request support. Right. So if you’re sending out a company wide communication or distribution that says, hey, on Friday at five o’clock, we’re going to transition to a new support organization. Here’s how you contact them.

Brian DeVault

Make sense. So one of the other things we’re going to want to do is review our weekly monthly meeting requirements, so who’s going to continue to meet once we integrate the long term support? And what’s that frequency? How often are they going to meet? What is the topic of conversation, those types of things?

Brian DeVault

So we’re definitely gonna want to review the long term reporting requirement. So anything like performance to SLA reports, anything that’s automatically produced, we’re going to want to establish that figure out who’s going to receive that from the client’s perspective. If there’s a service delivery manager also reviewing that, make sure that they’re getting copies of it and so forth.

Brian DeVault

And then we’re going to want to review any regularly occurring procedures, so anything that happens frequently, like on boardings and off warnings of end users, is a good example of that.

Brian DeVault

And again, we want to make sure our dates are clearly defined so that everybody understands on this day. At this time, this organization is now supporting us and no longer submit requests to the previous entity.

Mike Cromwell

So I’ve got a question for you. So internally, what kind of communication happens within your team to pair that team in contact with the team to be ready to execute?

Brian DeVault

So internally, a little bit further up in the in the process, the project management process, we’ve gone through staff trainings. So we’ve brought our staff up to speed on this client’s environment, what their requirements are from a support perspective, the scope of work. Are we supporting just desktops? Are we supporting the infrastructure servers, cloud based assets, whatever it may be? So they’ve been trained at this point and they understand what the scope is.

Brian DeVault

So internally we send out we use Microsoft teams, but internally we send out a note during the go live period that says this client is now alive and eligible to receive support.

Mike Cromwell

Well, there you have, folks. Brian DeVault’s team is a team of rock stars. They’re doing implementations at warp speed and unlike I think I’ve ever seen in this business. Big, hefty, complex projects, and if you haven’t watched the prior episodes, make sure you go back and check out the eight tenets of project management. But for those that want to learn how companies do it right. Follow his guide. So thanks for tuning in. And we’ll look forward to seeing you on next week’s whiteboard Wednesday.

Mike Cromwell

And if you have comments, leave them below. And a few suggestions for future whiteboard Wednesday topics, we’re all ears, send them in and we’ll talk about them. Thanks for joining.