Mitigating Go-Live Related Risks

As the first go-live date approaches, the 4S project team must know if the business organization is well prepared for this important project milestone. Therefore, the business readiness assessment is a valuable check point for identifying remaining people-related project challenges endangering a successful go-live. These challenges can then be tackled with appropriate mitigation activities. In addition, conducting this assessment allows the business users impacted by the first roll-out wave to provide feedback on potential issues they perceive regarding the upcoming go-live. Actively addressing these issues contributes to fostering confidence among the users that the transition will be handled professionally.

The 4S project leadership team decided to conduct a business readiness assessment before go-live. The team already agreed on conducting the assessment six weeks prior to go-live, addressing all impacted users of BriscoBikes and the BriscoBikes Holding, and using SAP Qualtrics as the survey platform. Furthermore, they committed to the same four guiding principles as for the pulse check – voluntary participation, anonymity, transparency, and practical implications. Next, they asked Sandra and Paul to develop a questionnaire.

The business readiness assessment collects information regarding both the current preparedness of the BriscoBikes users for the first go-live and regarding the influencing factors on the level of preparedness. Do you have an idea which topics are usually included in a business readiness assessment?

Take five minutes to complete exercise 33 in your workbook.

Before starting the development of a questionnaire, Paul wants to understand how to set up a business readiness assessment and which topics are usually addressed. Thus, he schedules a short call with Sandra.

As the project approaches go-live, the project team primarily focuses on managing technical and functional aspects, ensuring the IT organization is prepared for the transition. Simultaneously, change managers ensure that the readiness of the affected business units is equally prioritized. Following the business readiness assessment, the change managers analyze the collected data. They assist the 4S project team in gaining an overview of the specific people-related challenges within various business units, prioritizing mitigation activities, and focusing project resources on key action areas. Units with low business readiness must receive special support to establish the prerequisites for a smooth transition to the new system and processes. Therefore, improving business readiness significantly helps reduce people-related project risks and fosters the success of the 4S project.

After a two-week data gathering period, the change managers closed the business readiness assessment for BriscoBikes and BriscoBikes Holding. With a very satisfying response rate of 76 percent, the feedback provides a comprehensive overview of readiness across all business areas in scope in the first roll-out wave. Sandra and Paul already started to calculate mean values based on all questions belonging to a specific survey topic. They use a template Sandra created for visualizing the data and providing a high-level overview for different business units. The template is shown in the figure below.

The different survey topics are listed on the left side of the slide, grouped by the three categories. The grey space on the right side is used for visualizing the results of each topic. They are depicted on a five-point rating scale, ranging from "1: disagree" to "5: agree". The dotted green line at 3,5 of the scale marks the threshold between strengths and weaknesses. This facilitates the interpretation of the data.

Interpreting the results of a business readiness assessment and identifying appropriate strategies for improving the readiness is an important task for change managers. How would you interpret the first results, and which activities would you recommend?

Take 15 minutes to complete exercise 34 in your workbook.

As the 4S project team is very interested in the results of the business readiness assessment, Sandra and Paul schedule a call to discuss the first high-level results for selected business units.