So the data center migration project has a significant delay, we are four months into the project and the time line has slipped seven months. At that rate with the final date supposed to be December 2016, if the slippage continues at the same rate we would be looking at late 2018 for the completion of the project.
The bulk of the work so far has been documentation with some analysis, but probably all wasted. There is some scuttlebutt suggesting a moratorium, which will probably mean that the work already completed will be wasted. We won’t know until the end of March by the look of things, but I’m guessing that the news might not be very good.
The status of the project so far, well we have had two people on site for around two years doing the discovery work and it’s nowhere near complete. There are two migration specialists and they do not have enough work to do, along with a number of non technical IBMers and I’m not sure what they do at all. We have a project manager that I’ve come to think of as a Slinky, totally useless but brings a smile to your face as he tumbles down the stairs. In general the management sucks, mostly money from the customer as far as I can see.
This isn’t a big project, there are only probably 250 physical and the same number of virtual servers. But the chances of success in any reasonable time scale are remote. Internal process from the customer causes a massive overhead on any work, I would suggest that the loading could easily be an other 100 to 150%. Before I started this project I was told by someone who works at a senior level in the parent company, this migration project would take twice as long as it should – I hate optimists!