SSO Migration in 10 (+3) weeks ... People matters!

I have a long time SSO customer who came back to me after 6 months "ditching" us. Well, the actual fact was a new VP came in and we did not get along well. Anyway, he couldn't deliver after 6 long months and he was out of the game. The old VP called me immediately after she was reassigned  with the SSO infrastructure.

I'm very familiar with their environment and even though there is a lot of customization, I promised the whole migration will only take 10 weeks. Yes, a major jump in software version. A lot of code rewrites. A lot of Java code decompilation as the software has gone closed-source. It was real fun!

I brought in my best team. And we are going live this coming Sunday! (Ok, customer requested to delay go-live for another 3 weeks as there is 1 site that customer would not want to migrate to the new platform. Thus communication with their end-customers is required to shut down that site.)

Last mile and we are talking about Cut-Over Plan yesterday.

I joined in the discussion. Towards the end of the discussion, customer looked at me and asked me if I have any comment. My only request was: "Give me the same set of people who had performed the dry-run weeks before."

It is going to be a real long night this Sunday and a lot of eyes are on the whole team. I told the manager of the application teams not to assign people based on availability (you know, as this is a midnight job, the seniors will always find excuses not to be involved), but based on experience and capability. Don't give someone who has no idea what is going on.

People matters!