Deploy Service Management Function Overview
Deployment begins when stabilizing ends with the Release Readiness Milestone, which is a MOF Management Review. During deployment, the project team deploys the core solution and the site components into the production environment; stabilizes the deployment; transfers the project to operations; and gets final customer approval for the new solution.
Even though the Stabilize process is finished, stabilization continues during deployment as the team transfers the solution from a test environment into the production environment. After deployment, the team conducts a project review and customer satisfaction survey.
The Deployment Complete Milestone concludes deployment. By this milestone, the solution should satisfy the customer’s expectations and specifications—providing the expected business value to the customer. The customer must explicitly agree that the solution meets its objectives before the team declares that the solution has been successfully deployed to production. This requires a stable solution and clearly communicated criteria for success. Additionally, the appropriate operations and support systems must be in place. Upon reaching the Deployment Complete Milestone, the team should have finalized all activities and effectively terminated the project.
Deployment SMF Role Types
The primary team accountability that applies to the Deployment SMF is the Solution Accountability. The role types within that accountability and their primary activities within this SMF are displayed in the following table.
Table 1. The Solution Accountability and Its Attendant Role Types
Role Type
Responsibilities
Role in This SMF
Solution Manager
- Accountable role
- Owns all SMFs in this accountability
- Acts as project director for all projects
- Resolves conflicts between projects
- Ongoing oversight
Program Manager
- Drives design, schedule, and resources at the project level
- Ensures the solution is within agreed-to scope
- Manages the stabilization of the solution
Developer
- Builds the agreed-to solution
- Resolves problems with the solution
- Provides support for problem escalation
Tester
- Tests to accurately determine the status of solution development
- Tests performance
- Performs problem tracking and triaging
Product Manager
- Acts as the customer advocate
- Helps drive shared project vision
- Manages customer expectations
- Processes customer feedback
- Assesses the deployment
- Signs off on the deployment
User Experience
- Acts as the user advocate on project teams
- Helps define user requirements
- Helps design to meet user requirements
- Trains users
- Maintains the training schedule
Release Management
- Evaluates the solution design
- Documents operations requirements to ensure that they’re met by the design
- Creates a pilot, deployment plan, and schedule
- Manages site deployment
- Manages solution deployment
Operations Experience
- Advocates for operations on the project team
- Brings in operations experts as needed for detailed information
- Coordinates with release management
- Works with Release Management to ensure solution is operations ready
Test Manager
- Owns all testing across all project teams
- Develops testing strategy and plans
- Ensures that best practice test methods are used
- Ongoing oversight
Goals ofDeployment
The goal of deployment is to release a stable solution into the production environment. This includes stabilizing the solution in the production environment and transferring responsibility for the solution from the project team to the operations and support teams. Table 2 shows the desired outcomes of the Deploy SMF goals and lists measures that you can use to gauge how successfully you have achieved these goals after completing this SMF.
Table 2. Outcomes and Measures of the Deploy SMF Goals
Outcomes
Measures
Stable solution deployed to the production environment
- Number of support issues opened post deployment
Customer is satisfied with and accepts the deployed solution
- All sites are fully deployed
- Signoff on the Deployment Complete Milestone
Solution successfully transferred from the project team to the operations and support teams
- No project team members still actively involved in the project
- Number of support escalations from operations and support teams
Key Terms
The following table contains definitions of key terms found in this guide.
Table 3. Key Terms
Term
Definition
Baseline
A known state by which something is measured or compared. Baselining is placing something under change control. Baselines make managing change in complex projects possible.
Customer
The person or organization that commissions and funds the project.
Pilot test
A test conducted by a subset of users in a production environment. The pilot group uses the solution, providing feedback and reporting any bugs the group finds.
Quiet period
The period between the Deployment Stable Interim Milestone and the Deployment Complete Milestone. During this period, the project team is no longer active but does respond to issues as operations and support escalates them to the team. Typical quiet periods last from 15 to 30 days.
Stakeholders
Individuals or groups who have an interest in the outcome of the project, although their goals and priorities are not always identical to the customer’s. Examples of stakeholders include departmental managers who will be affected by the solution, IT staff who are responsible for running and supporting the solution, and functional managers who contribute resources to the project team.
Users
The people who interact with the solution to perform their jobs.
Final release
The final, fully tested version of the solution. A final release is considered to be stable and relatively bug-free with a quality suitable for wide distribution and use by end users.
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