Case study, government ICT
A national network refresh, delivered in eight weeks
The situation
The Services SETA was running on networking equipment that had reached end of life. Support was ending, the security posture depended on kit that could no longer be patched, and the replacement had to reach head office and every provincial site.
The constraint was the calendar. Eight weeks, a fixed budget set by the approved bid pricing, and an organisation that had to keep working while its network was replaced underneath it.
What we did
- Planned to the constraint. Eight weeks is not a schedule you discover, it is one you design backwards from. Procurement, deployment, migration, testing and acceptance were sequenced against that fixed end date.
- Covered head office and the provinces. Deployment and configuration of switching, wireless access, network access control and the central management platform across every site.
- Tested the things that break. Failover, redundancy and security policy were proven under test rather than assumed from the design.
- Migrated workloads deliberately, so the organisation kept working while the network beneath it changed.
- Closed it properly. User acceptance testing, documentation and ICT staff training, with a three year maintenance and support plan running from handover.
The outcomes
Delivered inside the window
An eight week programme run to its date, across head office and provincial sites, against fixed bid pricing.
Supportable again
End of life equipment replaced with a current platform under a three year maintenance and support plan.
The client can run it
ICT staff trained and documentation handed over, so day to day operation did not stay with the implementer.
The discipline behind it
A fixed date is a design input, not a hope
Short programmes are won in the planning, and lost in the assumptions nobody tested.