Due to out-dated applications, the client required a project delivery consultant to conduct a company-wide Microsoft Windows upgrade across all desktops and mobile devices. The company was experiencing multiple system shutdowns, loss of data, inability to receive new file formats as they did not integrate with the old systems. These issues were having major impacts to customer and stakeholder response times, an ability to meet day-to-day business requirements, inaccurate and loss of data amongst several other issues.
While the company had considered using its in-house IT department to manage the project, it was apparent that the team were not equipped to forecast and mitigate risks which undoubtedly would have an overall impact on business as usual functions.
The greatest risks they faced were that they did not fully know the number of systems needing to be upgraded as well as the current data and configurations on each system as this information was not consistently recorded or managed. Without this knowledge and experience to know how to manage such a scenario it was difficult for the IT team to accurately forecast timelines and costs or understand the levels of impact.