InControl©

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Access any time and any place

It’s of vital importance for all parties involved to be looking at the same updated data during transition projects. To ensure this remains the case, easy access to this administration is an absolute must. Separate overviews are created in Excel or emails as soon as any of the team members or a supplier don’t have access to this data. That’s the beginning of the end.

InControl© is hosted in the cloud and is quickly and easily accessible for the entire project team. No complicated installation predicaments. Once a new transition programme has been created, the transition manager can organise the access himself for the project team members and further set up the programme. Of course, various application roles have been defined with related rights, in order to be able to view and possibly change data.

A transition is more than a project

Of course, standard project methodologies such as Prince2 play an important role in the planning and execution of a transition. That’s why an extensive project management module has been included in InControl©. But a transition is more than a project. You also have to keep up-to-date on exactly what needs to be transferred or migrated. You are then talking about software and licences, packages which have to be prepared and tested, servers, printers and PCs which have to be migrated or transferred. There is a great deal to it all.

And then we also have the migration planning. Migrated PCs are rarely handed out to everyone in one go. This happens in line with a roll-out plan. This could be, for example, per business unit or per branch. InControl© will allow you to map out the organisation and plan the roll-out.

Project Management Module

The setup of a transition project often starts with the Project Management Module. The module was based on the Prince2 methodology and was composed with the aid of our transition managers’ best practices. All the end products are mapped out based on the contract. This is an important moment in the project. This list determines all the end products to be delivered. It’s also advisable to have this list approved by all parties.

We can subsequently start the project and organise the RAID-log. All the Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies are mapped out and monitored at an early stage. A complete RAID-log will allow for adjustments to be made at an early stage if problems or risks occur. It’s important to keep this log up-to-date for every team meeting.

We see it happening again during every project, not or incompletely documented changes and, of course, the subsequent discussion about the costs. Always document all the changes and the related impact and any costs, even if people think there is no impact or no additional costs are involved. A complete log and recording of agreements makes matters clear for everyone and means you won’t need to fall back on emails and separate notes lying about.

All these basic matters have been accommodated in InControl©’s Project Management Module.

Configuration Management Module

IT means are transferred or migrated in transition projects. It’s very helpful if everyone knows what is going to be transferred. That applies to hardware, but obviously to software too. And it goes beyond that, because what is the situation with the licences and what software must still be packaged so that it can be distributed (for instance with SCCM) to end users?

Not to mention the technical and functional ownership of each application. Who will test and accept the package? One thing you always know for sure in a transition project: the first missing applications already start to emerge during the first week, irrespective of how conclusive the list with applications for the contract is. And this continues. That’s just the way it works.

Even the customer isn’t always aware of everything being used in his own company. That’s isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it must be carefully managed. Extra applications will result in extra costs for inventory, packaging, roll-out, etc. That must remain transparent. The mapping out of all these aspects is supported by the Configuration Management Module.

Migration Management Module

There comes a time during the project when the end user workplaces will be ‘migrated’ to a standard environment. That rarely happens in one ‘big bang’, with a transfer phase from the present mode of operations (PMO) to the future mode of operations (FMO). Usually a choice is made to do a roll-out per Business Unit (or part thereof), or perhaps per physical location.

The question is, of course, whether that business unit or location is prepared for this. This applies to processes, but also to the technology. If, for instance, the user accounts or security groups have not been transferred, the user in question cannot be migrated. Or what about the group maps or functional mailboxes? All aspects which must be taken into account before a user group can be migrated.

InControl© helps with the mapping out of the organisation and locations. A handy signal function can be used to check whether the preparations were successfully completed at every level. Ultimately this can even be done at employee level.

The project team isn’t the only party interested in the progress

Transition projects are complex projects. These projects affect the entire organisation and often have several stakeholders. So more people will be interested in the ins and outs of the project. InControl© offers various management dashboards with which the progress can be made transparent. This ensures everyone receives the same up-to-date data set.

There is more…

• Transition projects are often international projects. InControl© is available in several languages.
• Of course, you always want to prepare an overview in Excel or be able to send a print out in PDF format via email. All that is possible too. InControl© supports various export formats.
• And last but not least… it’s always possible to find out which user implemented a change via an audit trail. It is inconceivable for someone to mark an end product as accepted ‘just like that’.

InControl© is never finished. We’re also still learning during transition projects every single day. And we include these lessons learned again in order to make InControl© even better. As the software is hosted in the cloud, the software is centrally maintained and everyone will also have all the latest features available.

Want to know more?

Are you curious about this tooling and other tooling and how it can be used by your organisation? We will be happy to tell you more about our tools and processes. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for a no-obligation introduction.