The big bang approach

Back from holiday and had a great time exploring the Nappa/Sonoma wine valley, Yosemite National Park and San Francisco. Even the weather was kind to me, with clear blue skies, though a little chilly at times.

When flying out I had the pleasure of Heathrow T5 (see blog on T5), but I was pleasantly surprised. It was quiet, smooth transition even through security and yes my bags actually arrived at my destination. All this just goes to prove that the “big bang” approach is really not the way to go. It’s nearly always best to start off small, perhaps with a “pilot” (not a good pun in this example) with a few internal flights transferring over first, to prove the processes, products, partners and people (the ITIL 4 “p”s). Then when you review with your Continual Service Improvement (CSI) programme you can resolve any issues and move onto the next scaling up of the transition, until you have completion. British Airports Authorities (BAA) and British Airways (BA) have had to revert to plan B, and slow down the transition, in doing so they are able to cope with issues and lesson customer impact. I had no problem 3 weeks after the opening with my travel experience, and as they slowly now scale up they are much better able to cope.

The main lesson to be learnt here is that no matter what type of project you are planning (CMDB implementation, Virtualisation, BSM), it is best to start with a pilot and in a small manageable impact reduced manner, and over time scale up whilst reviewing at each phase with the CSI processes. Big Bang fails in 90% of cases, so why do we always think of going that way?

Yesterday I presented in a Webex on "hints and tips for your CMDB implementation" which can be viewed here, along with the other 2 in the series. One of the tips was about starting small and working up once you've been able to iron out the problems and test all the 4 "P"'s. Have a listen if your working on your CMDB implementations.