In my previous posts here and here, I outlined Stages 1-9 in my Vista migration plan.
For Step 2, the idea in simple, as evidenced by this article.
Be flexible with your plans.
In creating out first six Vista migration scenarios, the underlying mantra chanted by the VITOs was the need for the upgrade to be as smooth and as unobtrusive as possible.
To accommodate that, we agreed to use the ‘Classical’ (XP) interface, and gradually bring the users into Aero.
Which seemed like a good idea at the time.
“Why would you upgrade users to Vista™, then make them use the old XP (Luna) interface instead of giving them the obvious benefits of Vista’s user interface?” – Aaron Coldiron, Lead Communications Manager for Windows at Microsoft
On January 7, I was part of a group of Microsoft Featured Communities’ members given a private tour of the Microsoft Pavilion at the 2007 International CES in Las Vegas.
During the tour, while talking to a presenter about our (Logikworx’s) plans for migrating users to Vista™, I explained to him that in the interests of getting users up to speed faster, and cutting back on expenses for training as mandated by clients, we were going to configure our first installs of Vista™ with the old Luna interface from Windows XP, an option allowed in Vista.
Thankfully, Aaron overhead my statement, and asked the question above.
My immediate epiphany, on the succinct way he phrased the question, made me realize that if we continued as planned, we not only would be shirking our fiduciary duties to provide the best to our clients, but would also be opening ourselves up to a support nightmare going forward.
I informed my staff at that very day that I was going to be making a drastic change in our plans for training users. We subsequently defined a new training regimen that is in force, and has been quite effective. That change in plans has served us well, with the resultant effect that there has not been any gotchas in the past sixty days.
Going into our first migration, we spent the first two days on the customer premises training users on the basics of Windows Vista and Office 2007, and scheduled sessions throughout the first week subsequent to the migration, with groups of five users at a time, allowing us to drill down on training individually, answer questions, and resolve issues.
The lesson here?
Every plan can be changed, as long as it benefits the customer. Furthermore, do not, for the sake of expediency or customer impatience, deliver a less-than-optimal solution to that same customer. Make the benefits more evident!
