It starts with a workflow:

When planning complex datacentre transformation events, having a precise workflow that maps all tasks and associated owners is crucial for ensuring the success of the event preparation and event execution. This type of workflow, also known as an event project plan, serves as a roadmap for the entire end-to-end process and helps to keep all participants on the same page and instep with each other.

Benefits of a workflow:

One of the key benefits of having a precise workflow is that it allows the project team to identify potential roadblocks and address them before they become major issues. This is particularly important when dealing with a complex migration that involves multiple systems and teams. By identifying potential problems early on, the team can mitigate or avoid them, minimising the risk of delays or missed actions.

Here at Towers Associates, we encourage customers and partners to work with us to fully define all steps, for all teams that need to deliver something that supports the transformation agenda. Some of the areas we look to capture, over and above the technical steps include:

• Target Platform Readiness
• Network preparation and swing activities
• Capacity planning
• Change Management
• Communications (internal and customer facing)
• Event Governance activities
• Support responsibilities
• Pre-cloning activities
• Post migration configuration tasks

It is more often than not that we take snippets of the workflows to create bespoke runbooks themselves, expanding tasks into multiple swim-lanes enabling tracking of different customers, applications or services.

Turning a workflow into a Runbook:

A precise workflow also helps to ensure that when the event runbooks are created, all tasks are completed on schedule. By clearly defining each task and its associated owner, the team can ensure that everyone knows their responsibilities and are working towards the same deadlines. Tasks are given a forecasted duration, which is validated and fine-tuned as events are completed. This helps to keep the events on track and reduces the risk of delays caused by misunderstandings or lack of communication.

Benefits of a Runbook:

Another important aspect of a precise runbook is that it helps to ensure that all necessary resources are allocated in a timely manner. This includes everything from hardware and software to personnel and budget. By mapping out all tasks and their associated resources, the team can ensure that they have everything they need to complete the event planning and execute the event itself on schedule.

Thankfully, having been through this with many different customers, each with a variety of challenges, we are now blessed with templates for most scenarios that enable a rapid start to the workflow capturing process.

Do get in touch with the team if you’re struggling to ramp up volume in your transformation projects. We’d be happy to assist in any way we can.