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April 2019: Office 365 Enterprise Implementation Update



Phase 1: Pilot Completed, Wave Migration Begins

The first quarter of 2019 saw the completion of DTI’s pilot migration of all DTI staff to Office 365 ProPlus and Exchange Online. This process which ran over the course of several months allowed the Project Team to tweak its plans and procedures to assure that agency rollouts and migrations go smoothly.

Agency Change Liaisons completed February readiness tasks. Among these was a major one: identify up to ten percent of their agency staff to become part of the State’s Early Adopters Group. There are still a few agencies who haven’t completed this work.

A key component to a successful O365 implementation within agencies is the identification of the organization’s Early Adopters Group (EAG). The EAG will be the first to receive updates and new features before deployment to the broader scope of agency users. This should not be a huge time commitment, but it requires a willingness to be helpful and an eagerness to try new things, as well as the ability to communicate and give feedback on experiences.  Upon engagement with each agency, the EAG will be the first to experience Exchange Online (EXO) and Office 365 ProPlus (OPP).

Next steps…

  • April 2019 – Organzational Change Management is scheduling Wave 1 Agency meetings to discuss implementation readiness and specific schedules. At these face-to-face meetings, the Office 365 project team engages agencies to determine Office 365 implementation readiness for Office 365 ProPlus (OPP) and Exchange Online (EXO) deployments. The team works with each Agency Change Liaison, the agency Customer Engagement Specialist, agency IRM and IT staff. They discuss the current status of projects, evaluate an agency’s equipment and software, and determine strategies for communications, timing and what will work best for an agency’s business cycle.
  • The O365 project team has developed an initial implementation roadmap outlining three (3) wave sets for agency deployments of OPP and EXO (see below). The goal is to complete OPP and EXO migrations by the Summer 2020, however active involvement from each agency will define the actual timelines. 

 

 

COMPLETED

  • February Checklist – Network Address Translation (NAT) updating successfully took place on February 18. Some rules and exceptions were put in place to accommodate individual agency needs.
  • Early Adopters Group Checklist Task (DUE MARCH 15 86% complete)– Agency Change Liaisons were tasked to identify approximately 10% of their end users to participate in an Early Adopters Group (EAG).
  • A Milestone Completed – All DTI staff (approx. 350) have been migrated to Exchange Online and Office 365 ProPlus has been deployed. The DTI Early Adopters were first to migrate and then the approach was three separate “waves”, all completed by March 27th. With each deployment, lessons learned were documented and course corrections introduced into the next deployment.
  • April 2nd – Office 365 Enterprise Governance/Center of Excellence (COE) held an initial meeting with DTI staff. The COE will enable efficient consumption of O365 Cloud Services within the State of Delaware. Its first task: develop a foundational governance to rollout services across different agencies.

 

Office 365 Website Updates

The Office 365 website, https://office365.delaware.gov continues to be updated as we develop new resources.  Office 365 Resources now include documents needed for migration, as well as Office 365 Applications training links and links to Office 365 training references such as Quick Starts and Cheat Sheets.

We appreciate your help in planning, preparing, and COMMUNICATING about this enterprise project.  We depend on all State employees to ensure the success of this project for your agency. Please spread the word about the Office 365 Project and direct people to the website if they have questions.

Please send any questions or concerns regarding the Office 365 project to us

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Need help?

Email Project_O365@delaware.gov


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