6.1 Planning

Large-scale IT transformation projects typically occur over an extended period in a production environment that might span multiple locations. Future network activities and conditions can be difficult to predict and details are as yet unknown. Complex projects with massive numbers of workloads might take months or even years to complete. It might be possible to plan details only a few months in advance.

PlateSpin Transformation Manager supports rolling wave planning to accommodate the near-term and long-term planning of your transformation tasks. You can organize the project’s transformation tasks in waves, as shown in Figure 6-1. For near-term waves, you can plan the tasks in detail. You can refine the transformation plan for future waves as newer and better information becomes available.

Figure 6-1 Wave Planning

Within a wave, batches group like workloads that you want to transform together. Batches can be more easily scheduled during intervals when network resources are available. You can deliver valuable results in each batch and wave. Schedules are flexible. You can coordinate the start dates and cutover dates with stakeholders to work around planned events that are critical to the business.

Figure 6-2 Batch Planning

Transforming workloads from their current operational mode to a future operational mode is the fundamental management goal for your transformation project. A transformation plan includes the following information:

Figure 6-3 shows the parent-child relationships between planning objects: Organizations, Projects, Waves, Batches, and Workloads.

Figure 6-3 Parent-Child Relationships of Planning Objects

Project dates can be set according to your business and network needs. Business factors include your project priorities, task dependencies, and the availability of resources. Network environmental factors include available bandwidth, connection speeds, and the amount of data being transformed.

You might have a specific cutover date in mind, or simply want to create a plan to get the work accomplished as efficiently and quickly as you can. External events might determine when certain tasks must be completed. IT and human resources availability also constrain your schedule.

Dates for waves and batches can be set manually or inherited from their parent objects. Dates of child objects must fall within the execution window of its parent object.

Figure 6-4 demonstrates how the dates flow down from parent to child. Manually set dates appear in a black font in fields and tables. Inherited dates appear in a gray font in fields and tables.

If you set dates manually, the date setting overrides inheritance rules. If you move a workload with a manual date from one batch to another, the manual date setting does not change, but the inherited date setting changes automatically. Figure 6-4 shows how the manual date remains the same after you move the workloads from Batch 1 to Batch 3. If the manual date falls outside the execution window for the new batch, the date appears in a red font in fields and tables. You must re-configure the dates for workloads if their execution windows extend outside their new parent window.

Figure 6-4 Inherited Start Date and End Date

PlateSpin Transformation Manager displays an object’s dates in the following font colors, depending on how the object obtained the setting:

When you create a project, you must associate it with a specific organization. Before you can add a project, you must create the parent organization to ensure that it is available when you create its transformation projects. Waves, batches, applications, and workloads are all child containers of their parent project.