Cutover activities: Things to do before UAT and before go-live

NikithaKumar

Author: Nikitha Kumar is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Sr. Principal Solution Architect at Anaplan.

Cutover activities are the tasks that are performed to transition from DEV environment to UAT or PROD environment.
In the delivery lifecycle, cutover activities are done twice:

1. UAT cutover activities are done post-implementation phase, but prior to beginning UAT. This helps prepare the UAT model(s) for user acceptance testing.
2. PROD cutover activities are done post-testing phase, but prior to go-live. This helps prepare the production model(s) for go-live.

Cutover activities checklist

Please download this excel file for the checklist:

Cutover Tasks (UAT _ PROD).xlsx

The cutover activities vary slightly with a new environment vs existing environment:

• New environment means the production model never existed and is a brand-new deployment.
  
• Existing environment means the production model exists, is actively used by end users, and structural changes need to be synched to this production model.

Hence, there are four tabs in the file, to be used accordingly.

1. For new environment, use tabs:
   
   1. New - UAT Cutover Tasks
      
   2. New - PROD Cutover Tasks
2. For existing environment, use tabs:
   
   1. Existing - UAT Cutover Tasks
      
   2. Existing - PROD Cutover Tasks

This checklist is generic. It can be used as is or customized as needed for any customer deployment ensuring quality deliverable.

Estimated timelines

For a smaller implementation with fewer models, two days or less should suffice.
For larger implementation, with many models could take 3-5 days. Remember to accommodate these timelines in the project plan.

Key assumptions:

1. Data availability: Data is the key pre-requisite. Cutover activities can be done once data is available in the Data Orchestrator (ADO)/Data Hub/Flat Files in the required format. This is referring to production quality data.
2. Customer availability: A key ingredient to success is customer participation! Highly recommend involving CoE team members/SMEs and assign non-Dev tasks enlisted in the cutover activities. E.g. Data validation is a core customer activity.

Based on the key assumptions and its status, evaluate and update cutover timelines accordingly.

The Anaplan Way App

This cutover checklist is also available in The Anaplan Way (TAW) App. To get access to TAW App, please contact support@anaplan.com and request the model along with the app, into the target workspace of choice.

Questions? Leave a comment!

nikolay_denisov

Hello Nikitha, thats very good templates, thanks for sharing!

I have couple of points to consider. For larger/more complex solutions we sometimes consider that we need to configure models with parameters. It probably falls into system modules review, but might haev specific settings to address multy country / multydiv settings.

Also I would like to add, that deployment of UAT/Prod models might sometimes require to set up Application. It also could be that it has to be a separate UAT app (but not always requirement).