Ramp a team up quickly…
on all aspects of a client’s development and operations
Situation
We were starting a new project at a new client, with the goal of transforming both the technical landscape and development practices (toward more cloud-based, agile, and automated approaches) while at the same time delivering upgrades or replacement of key applications in the client’s existing application suite. We had little knowledge of the client’s current software, infrastructure, applications, and development teams but had to start work and begin delivering value within the first weeks of the project. There were about a dozen subject matter experts covering these crucial areas for the client, all with very limited availability to work with us on knowledge transfer and ramp-up.
Objective
Bring in a small team and get them up to speed quickly on all aspects of the client’s application development and production operations.
Action
I started out by working with the client to brainstorm the most important topic areas, names of key personnel, and their areas of expertise and responsibility.
Then we produced a matrix of topics to individuals and cross-referenced which individuals were needed for each topic.
By applying an informal grouping and best fit algorithm to the matrix, I was able to produce an”optimzed” set of knowledge transfer / ramp-up meetings along with a visual picture of the timeline for each
We were then able to iterate with the individuals, teams, and their managers until we’d developed a schedule optimized to reduce the amount of time needed from each individual and minimize the need to repeat related topics across different constituencies.
Result
The client appreciated how the structured approach allowed us to collaborate on an efficient schedule and get the initial ramp-up completed quickly while minimizing impact on their time-constrained team members. This process and the accompanying format for capturing and iterating the schedule worked so well I repeated it successfully with other clients and even shared it with my clothes who were able to use this technique when facing a similar challenge.
Here are some detailed suggestions regarding the spreadsheet matrix I used for this process (I’ve been meaning to add a download link, feel free to reach out for a copy). Use a different letter in the matrix to identify the key technical and business rep needed for each topic, consider these cells with a higher priority and the other cells with “x’s” as nice-to have. Offer to record sessions for those that cannot make it. In the scheduling section, use numbers to identify the length of the session. Keep the matrix up to date as the sessions are held, to track progress and clearly communicate any impacts to the client when key personnel are required to attend to other business]