Engagement Phases Use the information in this section to guide you through the engagement. Envision Phase (Kickoff and Scope) Pre-engagement Information-Gathering Phase For this engagement to be successful, it is vitally important that it is delivered within the context of a specific customer situation and environment and it is essential to find out as much as you can before being on site for the first time. Also be aware that the customer might not be able to answer specific questions for all workloads appropriately, because the owners of these workloads have long since left the company and these workloads have been left as a legacy. Be prepared to challenge the answers you are given with regard to these workloads. To gather as much insight as you can for the workloads to be migrated and for the customer’s environment in general, an Environmental Assessment Questionnaire has been prepared to collect this feedback in a structured way. Important: This questionnaire should be sent out to the customer by you or the Engagement Manager (EM) at least two weeks before the engagement’s planned start. Before sending out this questionnaire to the customer, get in touch with the account team or some of your fellow consultants with specific customer experience to discuss the questions (possibly adding or deleting some of them) and prepopulate some answers with the feedback provided by the account team. Even if answers are provided by the account team, leave the question together with the account team’s answer in the questionnaire for the customer to be able to comment on that. Be prepared to challenge the account team’s answers as well. As indicated earlier, make sure that the questionnaire is ready to be sent out at least two weeks before the engagement’s start. Discuss with your EM who is going to send out this questionnaire and who is going to be the contact person for follow-up questions the customer might have with regard to that. Also be sure that you have identified the right person within the customer’s organization for this questionnaire to be sent to; when in doubt, ask. When sending out this questionnaire, consider adding the following pieces of information: A short “How To” in terms of the kind and depth of answers you expect (best highlighted by an example)
times and customer touch points) and make sure the customer agrees with your schedule by the end of the first week. Engagement Schedule Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Account Team (work starts two weeks prior to Week 1) Account Team completes the Environment Assessment Questionnaire as much as possible and then the remaining checklist needs to the customer for completion. On-site Week 1 Customer kickoff meeting Gather key information to complete the inventory activities and the Conditions of Satisfaction document Create the initial engagement schedule Create the Conditions of Satisfaction document Demonstrations to show the OLTP scenarios Demonstrations to show the OLTP scenarios Create project Vision and Scope document Prepare customer environment for workload inventory activities Submit engagement schedule, Vision and Scope document, and Conditions of Satisfaction to customer for acceptance End-of-day team meeting On-site Week 2 Customer status meeting Start workload inventory activities Continue workload inventory activities Continue workload inventory activities (if needed) Start categorization and analysis activities (focus on interviews) Start compiling inventory reports Continue categorization and analysis activities (focus on interviews) Create draft version of inventory reports and workload analysis for internal review End-of-day team meeting Off-site Week 3 Customer status meeting conference call Perform migration report compilation Continued work on inventory and migration reports Start creating SQL Server environment in Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines Produce Migration report On-site Week 4+ (size-dependent) Customer status meeting or conference call Continue creating SQL Server environment in Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines Perform workload migration (large engagement) Assess the deployed environment with the customer Customer on-site closeout meeting