The September 8th Reincarnation of the MSIS Ticketing System - Deadlines and Deliverables

-- Tony Markel

Setting deadlines, heck, even the word deadline, can inspire panic, ennui, a sense of hopelessness, or a sense of motivation.  I spent 5 years in the newspaper industry, and if it's one thing that drives them daily, it's the relentless approach of the deadline.  

It's amazing to see a diverse group of people rally to get a paper out. There's no "well, I guess we didn't get one out today".  The paper always goes out or the paper soon perishes. There's no mechanisms in place to handle the backlash of customer and advertiser complaints and requests for refunds if the paper fails to make a deadline.

I actually enjoy the tension working to a deadline requires.  It helps drive focus, and bring out essential issues to resolve where having more time leaves one with "well, someone will get to that someday".

Our deadline is September 8th, 2014

Here's what the project team must deliver on September 8th, 2014:

• A ticketing system in our current MSIS JIRA instance using JIRA Service Desk that provides the same level of customer interaction and measurement we use in Zendesk.
• The transfer of all tickets (~1GB of text data) from Zendesk to JIRA Service Desk.
• A customer feedback mechanism as good or better than what we have today.
• Communications that are timely and accurate to MSIS and our Customers

Here's how we're going to get there:

• Finalize Import Settings by August 8th
• Configure the User Interface with appropriate branding by August 22nd
• Finalize Product Configuration and Testing by August 29th
• Deliver training to MSIS Staff by September 5th
• Import tickets from September 5th through September 8th
• Go Live on the 8th

No miracles here, just lots of planning and hard work.

Why September 8th?  Isn't that a bit close?  Are you going to make it?

The goal for the project is to reduce costs while maintaining value.  We can't do that if we're running Zendesk 6 months into the fiscal year.  So, we've given ourselves until September 30th to be completely off Zendesk.  We've finalized this with our purchase of ZD licenses to terminate on September 30th.

In order to be off Zendesk by September 30th, we need to smoothly transition tickets in-flight from Zendesk to JIRA Service Desk.  We need both systems to do this.  The average life of a ticket is 22 business days, or about 4 weeks.  Dial back 4 weeks from September 30, and you're in the neighborhood of September 8th.  If we really wanted a full 4 weeks, we could have set the deadline to September 2nd, but I don't think it's wise to switch systems on a holiday weekend.  So, September 8th.

It's just barely doable.  But, it is doable.

Onward!