Initial stabilization

Now that you are live, the first few weeks—usually until the first month-end close—are going to be long weeks. During the initial stabilization period, it is important to ensure that the business is not hurting due to system issues. Communication is most critical, and investments in your support plan will pay off now by handling the communication to all stakeholders effectively.

As part of the initial stabilization process, you should be prepared to handle the prioritization of issues, management of bug fixes (along with their deployment into production), as well as transitioning support to the business by building a repository of FAQ's that they can begin to manage. The following sections walk through these key components of stabilization.

Triage and prioritization

Regularly triage the open issues with the business and IT. Prioritize issues and provide due dates. Communication is a very important part of this process:

• Limiting the noise: Very often...