Market & Sourcing

IT sourcing transition: from scope to success

by Jeremy Smith

The transition and transformation (T&T) in IT sourcing - the change of an IT provider - won't run smoothly if the T&T project plan does not cover all tasks and scopes estimates are incorrectly. Three aspects of a T&T plan show how customers and providers should proceed effectively.

 

“You win 80 per cent of the race before the start", German ocean sailor Boris Hermann is supposed to have said. This applies exactly to the transition and transformation (T&T) of outsourced IT services - both from the company to the provider (1st gen) and between two IT service providers (2nd gen). The T&T project plan is essential for success, and with it the scope of transition. Most mistakes happen at three key pain points, and those who avoid them have a good chance of making the transition a success.

1. Getting the T&T scope under control

It is often the case that experts writing the T&T plan do not know the full scope of the contract. This means that parts of the transition simply do not appear in the plan - such as the printer rollout or the migration of file servers between two vendors. One reason for this is: employees from the client, the vendor, and the consultant often come on board late. As a result, they don't know which components are part of the transition and where subsequent changes have been made.

You can read through the history and the contracts, but this gives you only a limited insight. On the other hand, if you have been involved from the beginning and have attended review meetings, you can update the T&T plans immediately if there are changes. Such decisions are often made on the last day: “We will add the archive to the T&T scope”.

Lesson learned: Everyone involved needs full scope control over the outsourced services. This may seem obvious, but it is by no means always guaranteed.

2. One T&T plan for providers and customers

Many customers expect: "I’ll choose a professional provider who knows how the transition works. They will take me by the hand and guide me through the T&T phase." What vendors actually do: They write a plan for their own activities which does not include the customer's tasks and services. However, a true T&T plan must include everything necessary to take over operations and change IT. This comprehensive scope covers not only the contractual provider perspective, but also lists all activities.

For example, the provider sets up the migration link from the old to the new data centre. What is missing in the plan, however, is the network connection for operations. If the migration link is dismantled after the transition, the customer needs the connection to the new data centre at that moment. However, if this is only realised shortly before the migration link is switched off, the end of the project is delayed, as ordering and delivery can take several months. You think this can't happen in professional organisations? In reality, these errors occur much more frequently than expected and are fatal to the success of the project.

Even though it would have been the customer's job to order the WAN for operations in time, the job has to be included in the T&T plan. "Holistic" may be consultant bingo, but it fits the bill: you really need to keep an eye on everything which needs to happen during the transition and transformation. This includes ALL the necessary activities of ALL the parties involved. The new provider does not have to do everything and is not responsible for it. However, they should draw up a holistic plan, agree it with the parties and orchestrate the implementation on that basis.

Lesson learned: Providers are reluctant to confront customers with their obligations to co-operate. Today, however, most companies realise that they need to be active in T&T and allocate resources. Providers are therefore called upon to ensure transparency and reliable planning.

 

 

3. T&T scopes are larger than outsourcing scopes

Pacta sunt servanda (“agreements must be kept“) - also in IT sourcing, but T&T is not just about activating contractually agreed services: the T&T scope is significantly larger than the contractual scope, so, this can lead to serious problems. For example, when outsourcing data centre infrastructure, not only the servers are moved, but also applications running on them. However, these are not included in the contract scope for infrastructure outsourcing. Nevertheless, T&T must obviously take care of this. It is therefore essential this task is included in the T&T scope - including the relocation of databases, load balancers, firewalls and other tools from the software/security stack.

Again, the entire plan comes from the provider. It must include all activities and parties to ensure the overall T&T success without any negative impact on end users and their business units. Once this is done, tasks are assigned to clients and providers. This makes it easier to plan resources, and sometimes a customer realises when they cannot do a task alone. In this case, the customer can assign additional tasks to the supplier in good time, such as an application assessment. The important thing is that all parties in the T&T phase always know which services are the responsibility of whom and when.

Lesson learned: I like to compare the T&T phase with open heart surgery to illustrate the problem. In addition to experienced heart surgeons, surgical specialists are needed to take care of respiration and anaesthesia so a complex project can become a success. Without an overarching plan for all affected organs (= IT services), T&T will fail.

 

Bottom line: If “a goal without a plan is just a wish”, then “a plan without a scope is just a wish” also applies to T&T. The scope of T&T usually goes beyond the contractual scope because it must be ensured that the transition does not have a negative impact on other related services. In IT, you cannot simply make changes in one place without taking peripheral systems into account - otherwise there is a risk of serious collateral damage.

A T&T plan must take all tasks into account but it also distributes responsibility by making a clear distinction between supplier and customer services. The primary objective of an extended scope in the T&T plan is to ensure the customer's business is not adversely affected and to provide transparency to them. In turn, customers must be able to prepare in good time for when they will have to provide which services in a project. All parties must actively work on the transition if they want to be successful together. If the partners do not work together, the new IT will not be integrated from the outset - a very bad start to a new relationship.

 

Jeremy Smith

Jeremy Smith

Jeremy is responsible for UK, Benelux & Northern Europe and has been in the IT benchmarking arena for over 25 years. He previously received bench­marking exercises as an end user and delivered benchmarking exercises as a project manager.

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