Project O365 is Underway

October and November were busy with project start-up tasks. Agency IRMs completed the first Readiness Checklist associated with the project that was due on October 1st. They identified Agency Change Liaisons for their agencies and back-up coordinator(s). These Agency Change Liaisons are on the front line to:

• Work with DTI’s Organizational Change Management Coaches to complete Readiness tasks;
• Be the first point of contact for project communications between the agency and Project O365 staff;
• Assist in identifying agency impacts, including researching and documenting application/desktop data;
• Communicating, promoting and educating with/to/about the project to staff to whom they have a defined responsibility; and
• Participate in end user testing.

Change Liaisons attended Skype meeting presentations with Organizational Change Management and Project staff, briefing them on the project. They asked questions and learned about their roles.

Email Migration Plan Testing Begins

On November 2nd, as a pre-pilot, 48 DTI staff volunteered to undergo an email address change. They agreed to have their email address changed to the new domain, @delaware.gov. They also switched to the new Cisco Unity voicemail system. These volunteers are putting the email domain change plan through its paces to smooth the way for the rest of us. After the pre-pilot identifies any problems to  fix, a larger pilot will begin. This next pilot will involve more than 200 DTI staff to fine-tune the plan before the email domain change rolls out to other state agencies.

November Readiness Checklist Tasks

Agency Change Liaisons are working on their next set of Readiness tasks. The November Readiness Checklist has three tasks:

• identifying any applications agencies have that use an email address (anything@delaware.gov);
• identifying applications/servers that use static IP addresses to make calls external to the state network; and
• identifying applications/servers that use Exchange Web Services.

Some agencies will have little or no work to do to complete these tasks which are due by the end of the year. But for others, it may involve a bit of digging. Some agency business processes have existed for long time—well before staff who currently use or maintain them. It is important to consider these details early in this project. This allows ample time to identify impacts. Agencies can then make changes that may be needed before migration.

Stay tuned as we keep you up to date on Delaware’s move to Office 365!