Migration Resourcing
Resourcing the email migration project can present many challenges, such as: large-scale project, staff turn-over, internal politics, and geographic challenges.
Ensure you at least resource for the following key people to be 100% available during the project.
- Project Sponsor — needs to be a senior executive in the business who can be an escalation point for the Project Manager - this person must support the project at a political level.
- Project Manager — manages the email migration project at a non-technical level
- Technical Lead — responsible for all technical aspects of the project
- Trainer — provides Training to the users, and is available to answer generic queries concerning how the new email client will work. It is important to protect the Technical Lead from these questions.
- Support Team Lead — manages the support/helpdesk staff to ensure they assist users with the new email system during the migration.
Ensure your project has a competent Technical Lead who can sit with the Project Manager throughout the entire project. The Technical Lead must be familiar with all technical aspects of the project and be able to answer questions on all them without reference. This is vital for credibility if the Project Manager is being questioned on the project by a key person in the business. If the Project Manager displays any uncertainty then this can have a negative impact on the project. Having a Technical Lead who can immediately answer questions mitigates this issue.
Ideally the Technical Lead will be devised the high-level strategy and be a familiar person to your company’s leadership team. They need confidence in the Technical Lead in order to have confidence in your project.
The Technical Lead may not be able to actually carry out all the technical work on the project, but they must be capable of doing it, and be responsible for the work.
There may be times in the project when something goes wrong, and it is of key importance that the Technical Lead is able to take quick decisions to remediate the issue as quickly as possible.
The Project Manager can deal directly with the Technical Lead, who can then deal with additional technical staff as required.
In the author’s experience problems can be presented during a project due to reliance on unreliable technical individuals. Reduce this risk by being reliant on a totally reliable Technical Lead – who is not reliant on anyone else!
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