The Cutover Detailed Plan Document

Success is the detail!!

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What is a Cutover Detailed Plan?

The Cutover Detailed Plan for a Cutover Manager is like the architectural plan for an Architect. 

It’s the one single source of truth and the Go-To document to manage, understand, and track during the Cutover Preparation.

 

The Cutover Detailed Plan lists every Business, IT & Management steps which are required to bring the entire solution into Production, minimizing the business impact. 

 

Success in the details ! There is no more : “Don’t need to note it down, I’ll manage”… We are going to note EVERYTHING down. The Cutover Detailed Plan is there to make sure all dependencies are identified, to make sure every aspect of the project has been covered, and to provide visibility to ALL teams involved. 

 

The Cutover Detailed Plan is your detailed contract to Go Live. It will be reviewed many times, updated even more, and then Signed Off before the Cutover execution. 

 

What could be A Cutover Detailed Plan Template?

The simple principle: Get all the information you need in a single place. Through our years working on Cutover Management, there are a hundred ways to track a Cutover. It can depend on your preferences, your organization preferences, the tool you use (Excel, MSP, Smartsheet etc..) and so on.

 

We like to think simplicity over complexity. This template tends to be flexible and dynamic to make your life easier. 

 

The format is not frozen, feel free to adapt it to your needs and projects. Values are dummies.

The High Level View tab

Wondering Why? We just highlighted how important it is to go deep into the detail, here we are with a High Level View. 

The High Level View is a result of the Cutover Detailed Plan information. The main objective is to provide the Big Picture. It helps to visualize How the main activities are synchronized, what are the dependencies and progress status during the execution.  

We know how Senior Stakeholders love PowerPoint! Building nice slides with a lot of colours. Keeping the High Level in Excel provides the flexibility to make changes independently to the size of the slide. 

Another advantage, We keep all information in a single document. So we don’t have to jump between several files or slides, looking for which one contains the information you need. 

The Detailed Plan

The master plan! Keep track of all the tasks along the Cutover with the key information

 

COLUMN’S DESCRIPTION

  • Date: Task’s date when the task needs to happen relatively from the Go Live date. As plans always moves, the date is a factor of the number of days from the target date. Hence, you don’t have to update the column over and over. 
  • Day to Go live: Number of days from the target date
  • Estimated Time: What time the task is starting. The first time from a section is fixed, the next one is dependent of the previous task’s duration
  • Duration: Estimation of how long the task will take
  • Actual Time: When did the task really start during the production Cutover? 
  • Actual Duration: How long did the task really last ? 
  • Exec Status: Execution Status of the task 
  • System ID: Which system is impacted by the task? 
  • Activities: Task’s description
  • Team & Task Owner: Multiple Dependent Drop-Down list linked to the Contact details tab. 
  • Task Status: Does the task need “To be Review” for more detail? Is the task “Confirmed”? or it’s actually not required and can be “Cancelled”
  • Comment: Add any comment, note taken from a Cutover session or during the actual Cutover, to make sure you don’t miss anything

Usage Tip 1:

 

Communication: Here we are using Comms in System ID to identify the communication steps to send out during the Cutover. It also makes it easy to filter on the keyword Comms to extract your Communication Plan.

Usage Tip 2:

 

Dynamic Assignment: Using Dependent Drop-down List, maintain only your contact list in the Contact Tab (see below)

The Rollback Plan

The Detailed plan to rollback in case of major issue. Once we have a better estimation of How long the Rollback will take, we would need to add a Cut-off time into the Cutover Detailed Plan for the Decision point.

 

The format is similar to the Cutover Detailed Plan

The Action log

Keep track of the actions taken from the Cutover sessions

The Cutover Contact List

Keep the contact in a safe place

The Bonus Tab – The Cutover Dashboard

Simple visual report to have a view on the Cutover progress. It can be easily used for any communication mail with senior stakeholders. 

Dashboard Date = TODAY()

Go Live date = The go live date from the Detailed Plan

Rag Status = Green, Amber or Red

Comment = For you to update before sending the comms out

Number of executed tasks and Number of tasks behind the scheduled are calculated from the Detailed Plan. 

The Cutover Detailed Plan Template Download

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