This phase will commence once the specification has been accepted and signed off, whether it was created by Code Development consultants or by your staff.

It is usually possible to organise migration of custom applications, reports and integration interfaces in discrete sessions for each of the sub-projects. As the migrated items are completed, they will be unit-tested by developers, and then passed on to Q&A to conduct integration and performance testing. At this stage, early adopters or user champions will be involved in performing usability testing and verification that the delivered system complies with the agreed specification.

It is not uncommon at this stage to identify further requirements, as this is the first time that the new version will have been seen by users in operation.

Once the upgraded system is fully tested and signed off, the new installation can be deployed with a potential parallel run period, using both old and new systems. Considering that this is the most critical phase for the system, we will also devise backup procedures to avoid any discontinuity or loss of work, should unpredicted problems arise.

Phase three is executed through two distinct sub-stages, one leading up to 'go live' and the other stage immediately following it:

• Upgrade execution
  • Database backup
  • Test environment deployment
  • Test database upgrade
  • Application server components installation
  • Screen painting and customisation
  • Migration of reports and interfaces
  • Custom application migration/development
  • Offline testing and optimisation
  • Production database conversion
  • Iterative performance tuning
  • Security settings and user privileges
  • Creation of recovery and fallback mechanisms
• System deployment
  • New system launch, optionally in parallel with existing system
  • Synchronise databases and user settings
  • Shutdown old system
  • On-site training of administrators and user champions/trainers
  • Final performance benchmarking and optimisation