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Most telecoms businesses with more than five years of history are planning a business transformation, one or more system consolidations, new system introductions, cost saving programmes and/or product convergence. All of these companies will, at some stage, require to move a quantity of information from one or more systems to a strategic system or systems. Often this information is business critical and so cannot be off-line for more than a few seconds or the quantity of data is very large. According to the Standish Group, 80% of migration projects fail or overrun. So one would think that with these additional risks the chances of failure must be higher still. This isn't looking good for the staff responsible for delivering the project or the business trying to create greater efficiency from its product set and customer base around the migration. What can Telcos learn from the experiences of others and can their lessons be transferred? A lot and yes! The following observations come from projects over a number of years and in particular some recent successes using new techniques and methods. Some characteristics may not transfer to every project but most projects will be able to take up a number of these factors to improve the chances of success from the current expectations of 20% towards certainty. The ten factors of a successful migration: 1. Bring your business along Difficult decisions will need to be made on the way and these will often only go your way if the powers that be have confidence that you can be successful and deliver on your promises. Previous negative experiences will reduce their confidence and will tend to create decisions that don't work in your favour. For example placing unnecessary restrictions or demanding multiple back-up plans. These will all increase your cost and ultimately reduce the chances of success. So you need to show them that you have their problems at the centre of your plan and that your strategy is based around their needs. Make sure that you're not stopping the business for a period during the transformation. Traditional approaches tend to have prevented any system development during the period of the transformation project. New techniques enable your business to continue to move their systems forward during the project 2. Create control - go at your pace Does the uncertainty of having one foot in one camp (the old systems) and one in another (the strategic systems) sound familiar? Or being pushed to breaking point from the pressure that you take a leap of faith before testing has completed or all data reconciled? You need to use progressive migration methods (moving the data in small steps) and a transformation product to ensure that the business can continue to develop in parallel with the migration. By using this approach you can start very carefully and as the migration steps are repeated then accelerate. Experience shows that this approach usually ends up with faster migrations. 3. Repeat to accelerate (Beat your completion expectations) A knock-on effect of the previous point: Any repeated operation can be improved over time. So plan to migrate in tens or hundreds of small steps and not just one or two huge ones. Additionally don't start the project by building software that already exists in product form. It's cheaper and faster to use a product and any problems or odd features with the software have either been ironed out or are well known. 4. Remove the risk This statement shouldn't need to be included because it's obvious that the chance of success increases as the risk reduces, isn't it? So why do we continue to take chances in migrations, make huge leaps of faith, not fully test the data or processes and expect the business to be trained and ready for the new systems overnight? 5. Reduce dependencies on other departments Relying on someone who's out of your control can be devastating for migration projects. They're inevitability completed late because your project is not a part of their objectives, so it is not a priority. So get the experts you need inside your team and then use external staff to approve process and design. This traditionally isn't easy because in large waterfall projects the team needs input at each stage. However if you follow a progressive migration approach you'll get external buy-in quickly on the first few cycles of migration and from that point you're on your own. 6. Reduce dependencies on other migrations Most large Telcos today have tens, hundred or even thousands of system migrations running in parallel. Some simple calculations will show that the probability of the programme succeeding tends towards 0. If the migrations are independent then the chance of success increases massively. The principles of success are ensuring that a data migration in one system does not require a corresponding migration of data in another system. Transformation software products can help here to. 7. Remove the big-bang Already discussed to some degree, but repeated because it's fundamental to so much else. Every time you move some data you must also move some business process. If you migrate data in big chunks then you must also migrate business process and PEOPLE in large chunks too. People tend to resist change and carry old habits forward. Therefore move data and people in small units so that the advanced group can learn and pass on their experiences of the new systems (and also hopefully their encouragement) to the following groups. Big bang transformations often fail, not because of the software or data. Even though they often fail for this too. 8. Reduce the number of staff People make mistakes, however most staff tend not to repeat the same mistakes. Also everybody requires time to get up to speed. Therefore use fewer staff in specialised functions and enable them to repeat their activities often in a migration. Try to create a migration factory. This is done through a few techniques: migrate in many steps (already stated above), use software transformation products to help reduce the project development effort and to provide information on the project's progress, separate the technical activities from the business activities. Identify data groups and specialised test and reconciliation users. 9. Use Migration experience Use migration specialists along with your local experts. We tend to learn the same mistakes on every migration. Also bring in a migration product that helps control the migration. Products will bring tried and trusted methods so that you are introducing experience into the team from multiple projects. 10. Don't panic! Most teams faced with a daunting challenge will at some time lose confidence. Run a trial project with your new techniques to test out the theories within your organisation. This will raise confidence across the company and enable multiple independent migrations to be triggered in parallel. Therefore far from adding time to the programme it can ensure that large scale migrations can be delivered ahead of expectations. Business transformations can be achieved successfully; you needn't be one of the 80% who fail! Migrations have often been seen as the projects to stay away from. With new strategies you can now reduce the risk and be seen as the hero of the day if you use the right products and team of people. Such strategies have helped BT for example generate over £100m in new revenue! "Cometh the hour cometh the man" (or woman) - Cliff Gladwin (Durban, 1948). Take heart and get going - you'll soon see there is light and a pot of goodies to be had right at the end of the tunnel. www.celona.com The views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of MobileIN.com. You are encouraged to seek the advice of health professional concerning these matters of great importance.
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