Peter,

Parwez identified many of the physical steps necessary.  However, from your 
question I think you were hoping for a more high-level PM-ish kind of answer.

>From a very high level the project phases might include the following:

Pre-Sales:
The Presales Phase should include really understanding your environment and 
needs.  Performing a capacity study and modeling your workload on different 
capacities is only part of the effort.  You need to be educated on the new 
features and also any newer features from prior generations that might be of 
interest to you.  For example, today your enterprise may have a 10Gb network 
backbone in place, so you may want to eliminate any 1Gb OSAs (except for the 
ones used for consoles) and have your new system come in with the 10Gb OSAs.   
Does you network team have plans to convert your 10Gb backbone to 25Gb in the 
next three to 5 years?  If so, then maybe 25Gb OSAs would be appropriate.

Are you running any Linux on z (on IFLs) today?  If yes, the perhaps the 
Container Hosting Foundation feature should be ordered.  This is a relatively 
new feature that, along with support from z/OS 2.4, that allows you to run 
Linux containers under z/OS with the Linux workload running on  zIIP engines, 
This is an intriguing idea especially for instances where there is fairly  
tight integration/interaction between the z/OS and Linux portions of the 
workflow.  Just imagine, instead of having to set up a permanent Linux instance 
running somewhere, you can run it as a step in a batch job!

What about your I/O configuration?  The z15 can be configured as a single frame 
CEC if you do not have a really large I/O configuration. Would this be 
appropriate for your environment?  This needs to be identified, discussed  and 
understood in the Presales phase to really determine if it is a viable 
configuration for your environment.

Planning Phase:
Next would come the planning phase.  this would be a collaborative effort 
between your team and the IBM or Business Partner team that is working with you 
on the project.   Much of the effort of the project will be in this phase.  
Many of the things that Parwez identified and many more will be worked on and 
tracked to ensure that the cutover will be successful.

Physical Installation:
The Physical Installation is completed by IBM and the machine is cabled to your 
network, I/O devices, etc.

Pre-Production Testing Phase:
If it is possible that the current CEC and the new CEC can be up concurrently, 
this phase may take up to several weeks.  During this phase, test and/or 
sandbox LPARs may be brought up and tested, issues with ISV keys can be 
identified and corrected, etc.  This allows for through testing of the 
environment before cutting production over to the new CEC.

However, if the production cutover needs to occur as close as possible to the 
physical install, then the Pre-Production testing phase is limited to much 
shorter time - maybe minutes or an hour or two.

Production Cutover is the next phase.
This is where the old CEC gets uncabled from the I/O and all effort transfers 
to getting the new CEC into production.

Production Testing Phase
The production testing phase immediately follows the production cutover.  This 
phase may last up to several hours if your outage window and client commitments 
permit it.

Milestone: Production testing  is followed by a Go/No Go decision

Assuming that the decision is Go, you then proceed into the Post Implementation 
Phase.  However, if the decision is a No Go, then you proceed into the Fallback 
Phase.

Fallback Phase.
Take all steps necessary to swap the original CEC into production.  Then you 
will need to go back to the Planning or Pre-Production Testing phases.

Post-Implementation Phase:
Here you would monitor the environment for a few days with a heightened 
awareness and preform any clean-up from the cutover and pack up the old machine 
for return.

This is obviously a very high level list and a lot of detail needs to be 
included.  The vendor team (either IBM or your IBM Business Partner) should  
assist you with developing and implementing the plans.  The complexity and size 
of the planning effort varies for customer and each installation within that 
customers environment.

I hope this helps. 

Regards,
Mike Smith

 

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Parwez Hamid
Sent: Monday, February 3, 2020 12:54 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Phases of Project in Mainframe

This will differ for each customer and there will be a number of dependencies. 
Key phases should cover (each topic will have its on subtasks):

1) Physical Planning (physical planning/power/space/channel cabling/network 
connectivity/HMCs etc etc)
2) Operating System levels etc
3) Capacity Planning. LPAR planning/configuration
4) ISV Software/products levels
5) Applications
6) DR/Backup
7) Operations procedures

I am sure there are other tasks and these will again depend on the experience 
and skill level of those who are doing the 'installation of or migration to the 
z15'

A combination of the the following:

z15 Redbook (SG24-8860) and the z15 Installation Manual for Physical Planning 
(GC28-7002) may help you in creating a Project Plan.


Regards

Parwez Hamid​

________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of 
Peter <[email protected]>
Sent: 02 February 2020 05:56
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Phases of Project in Mainframe

Hello

Apologies for this question as am not a project manager.

My manager generally wants to know what are the phases of the project(for 
example if someone is rolling out z15).

Could someone share the phases that you go through generally for a Mainframe 
hardware implementation.

Peter

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