WINDOWS 1002000 PROFESSIONAL RESOURCE KIT [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Conducting a Pilot

After you verify your Windows 2000 Professional design in your test environment, you need to test it in your production environment with a limited number of users. A pilot reduces your risk of encountering problems during your full-scale deployment.

The primary purposes of a pilot are to demonstrate that your design works in the production environment as you expected and that it meets your organization's business requirements. A secondary purpose is that the pilot gives the installation team a chance to practice and refine the deployment process.

The pilot provides an opportunity for users to give you feedback about how features work. Use this feedback to resolve any issues or to create a contingency plan. The feedback can also help you determine the level of support you are likely to need after full deployment. Ultimately, the pilot leads to a decision to proceed with a full deployment or to slow down so you can resolve problems that might jeopardize your deployment.

The primary steps for conducting your pilot are:

Select the pilot group.

Prepare users and sites.

Conduct the pilot.

Support and monitor the pilot.

Obtain feedback and evaluate the results.

Choosing the pilot group and the start date of the pilot deployment is one of the most important tasks of the Windows 2000 Professional deployment project. One of your primary goals needs to be to build and test version one of your preferred client configuration, take time to learn from the experience, and then make the necessary adjustments for the actual deployment. Ideally, the pilot group will be representative of the larger group you are targeting, but this is not important enough to delay the project. Regardless of the group you choose for the pilot deployment, the lessons that are learned and the skills that are developed during the pilot in most cases will apply more generally to the wider deployment.

The pilot group you select will determine the specifics of many other tasks you need to perform, such as identifying applications and hardware that must be tested, the specific design of the desktop, and the target date for completion of the deployment.

The size of the pilot group needs to be small enough to minimize risk and large enough to test the logistics and scalability of your process. The size will also depend on the larger scope of your project. If your entire deployment project is 50 general business users, then a pilot of 5 is enough. For a group of 1,000 users, a pilot group of at least 25 users will ensure that your processes are tested. In general, it is best to keep the pilot group between 25 and 100 users.

Consider the following when choosing the pilot group:

Selecting the pilot group is the "critical path" in the project, meaning that
it directly affects the project schedule. Many other tasks are dependent on the choice you make.

Ideally the group will be technically representative of the overall project scope. This includes hardware and software in use.

To minimize risk in the pilot, avoid groups that will be focused on business critical
tasks during the pilot deployment. For example, you need to avoid the accounting department during the
end of your company's fiscal year.

After selecting the pilot group, the End User Advocate needs to select an influential end user representative from the pilot group to add to the project team. An influential end user is the "computer expert" in the group, the person that group members go to for peer technical support or computer advice. These influential end users will provide essential feedback on all aspects of the project, particularly the desktop design, user training, and communications to the other users in the pilot group.

3.0.1 Preparing Users and Sites

The pilot process includes the following logistical and planning activities. Many of these activities can and should take place concurrently with other planning, design, and testing processes. Be sure to include these activities in the project plan as appropriate.

Develop the pilot user communication, training, and support plans.

Conduct pilot department site survey of equipment and software.

Procure any additional hardware required to bring the computers up to the minimum project standards.

Purchase any additional software and deployment tools required for the pilot.

Determine who will perform the deployment.

Determine the installation process and the number of systems that can be installed per day
using the process. Start with a conservative number and adjust the schedule as the pilot progresses.

Create a specific user-by-user implementation schedule. Determine when the deployment will start
and the time of day that the installations will occur. Notify the users of the specific downtime
requirements.

Set up the installation server with the appropriate configuration files and setup scripts.

Have the users reset the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS), screen saver, and application passwords.

Line up administrative access to reset passwords, user IDs, and so on, as necessary during deployment.

Create a support and feedback mechanism plan. Determine the escalation path for problem resolution.

Train the installation team on the configuration and installation process.

As you develop the checklist of logistics, consider your goals for the pilot rollout and the factors that define its success. For example, you might set a percentage for successful upgrades or for automated installations that, if achieved, would indicate that the rollout had been successful. Or you might set a threshold of end-user downtime. If downtime stays below this threshold, another indicator of success has been met. Document these goals and criteria, so that the project team can monitor performance against them during the rollout.

Conducting and Monitoring the Pilot

As you conduct the pilot rollout, you might find that certain tasks take more or less time than expected, that some tasks need to be added, or that some tasks can be left out. Be prepared to modify the pilot rollout schedule to account for such changes, and use the pilot schedule for projecting the final rollout timetable.

The following is a summary of the tasks involved in conducting the pilot rollout:

Conduct virus, disk scan, and defragmentation tasks on the target hard disk drives.

Conduct the file and configuration backup per your installation plan.

Perform the automated installation process you created and tested.

Have your technicians on-site for the initial installations to document the process and problems and to support the users.

Your team needs to continually monitor the pilot including the following:

The time and all measurable factors in the installation process, including the number of attempted installations, the number of successful installations, and the elapsed time for each installation.

Network bottlenecks and areas that need to be tuned.

Application performance.

Although monitoring tools provide much information, it also helps to visit the pilot site periodically. Talking with users frequently uncovers issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. Be sure to check problem reports frequently and look for trends.

Continue to monitor the pilot installation for a week to make sure that everything continues to run smoothly. Make note of improvements to the installation, training, or support, where appropriate.

During the pilot, assess risks to the project. For example, look for the following:

Scope changes

Cost increases

Interoperability problems

Unanticipated downtime

For more information about conducting a pilot, see "Conducting Your Windows 2000 Pilot" in the Deployment Planning Guide.