IT Consultant - Information System Transition Scoping
My role and scope
I independently scoped the functional and data requirements for the transition, working with business teams and IT through the options appraisal and initial migration scope.
Context
A defense organization was planning changes to its product lifecycle management (PLM) system, used for support and maintenance. It needed to choose between an upgrade and a move to another internal tool to meet IT security requirements. The scope covered business workflows and the data to migrate.
Business workflows and functional scope
- Analyzed the needs of four business user groups across their end-to-end workflows and the PLM features they used.
- Modeled users, working methods and interfaces; mapped the functions of the current and target systems.
- Assessed reported difficulties to distinguish required tool changes from issues that could be addressed through working practices.
- Reviewed 21 external applications and their interfaces, accounting for their dependencies in the transition.
Solution comparison and data migration planning
- Built a functional comparison matrix for the two internal tools to inform the choice of solution.
- Recommended tools for engineering workflows from solutions already deployed or being rolled out.
- Analyzed differences between data models and the corrections needed before migration.
- Wrote the initial functional and data migration scope so IT could estimate the subsequent work and define a deployment target.
Options and transition roadmap
- Developed four scenarios accounting for security and service continuity requirements.
- Prepared Rough Order of Magnitude cost estimates and compared risk levels for the options appraisal.
- Planned the work over a five-year horizon, including application dependencies and organizational blockers.
Scoping deliverables
- Proposed 5-year roadmap incorporating dependencies on 21 external applications.
- 4 scenarios compared by cost and risk level.
- Needs of 4 business user groups documented across their end-to-end workflows.