A large Call Center install of a new CRM system had training in 4 groups, two days each. But the training rooms were booked the week before go-live, so the first training group was held a week early - thus the three weeks before go-live were: training, training, downtime, (then go-live weekend).
As it turned out, this worked out perfectly and I’d recommend this schedule every time. Some people get sick and miss class, or don’t “get it” the first time they are trained, the extra week gave time for remedial training. Some bugs are inevitably discovered during training, this gave time for thought-out fixes (not the common “I hope this works” fix thrown in just before live deployment).
One of the bugs found was subtle and tricky, and took two days to fix. If we hadn’t had the extra week, we might have had to delay things (thus egg on our faces) or gone live with this bug and stored some bad data. Instead, with the help of this extra week, we looked like geniuses (we were, but that’s bragging :-) when the biggest post go-live problem was the occasional browser timeout.
So if you can, build in a short delay between training and go-live; you'll be glad you did.
Friday, April 3
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