Go-live is where projects are judged, so it is where problems become visible. But it is rarely where they begin.
The frontline team that wasn’t trained in time. The data that didn’t migrate cleanly. The process nobody redesigned, so staff work around the new system on day one. The support model that assumed the vendor would cover it. Each of these feels like a go-live surprise. Each was decided – or more often, not decided – months earlier.
Technical readiness is not organizational readiness
Most plans track whether the technology is ready: build complete, testing passed, environments stable. Far fewer track whether the organization is ready to work differently from Monday morning.
That second question is harder to measure, so it gets deferred. It lives in a “change management” workstream that starts late and reports in percentages that mean very little. By the time anyone asks it seriously, the date is fixed and the only remaining choices are expensive ones.
The readiness questions to ask at kickoff
Readiness is not a phase near the end. It is a set of decisions to make at the start, then track all the way through:
- People – Who must work differently, and when will they be trained, practised and confident? Who will they ask for help in the first week?
- Process – Which workflows change? Have the people who run them helped redesign them?
- Data – What must be migrated, cleaned or reconciled, and who signs off that it is right?
- Support – Who answers the phone after go-live, for how long, and with what escalation path?
- Decision – What criteria will decide go or no-go, and who has the authority to call it?
Decide the go/no-go criteria early
The most useful readiness decision is also the one most often left until last: what does “ready” mean? Agree the go/no-go criteria at the start, while nobody is under pressure and the conversation can be honest.
Criteria set early become a shared standard the whole project works toward. Criteria invented in the final week tend to describe whatever state the project happens to be in.
Track readiness like scope and schedule
If readiness matters as much as the build, it deserves the same visibility. Give each readiness area an owner, a measure and a place on the steering committee agenda from the first month – not the last.
When readiness is tracked from the start, gaps surface while there is still time to close them. When it is tracked at the end, the only remaining lever is the date.
Go-live doesn’t create problems. It reveals the decisions that were made, or avoided, along the way.
A Readiness Review before kickoff – or a Health Check before go-live – is a structured way to find the readiness gap while it is still cheap to close.
18+ years leading complex delivery across public, private and regulated environments. PMP, CSM, M.Sc. Kay helps organizations and the leaders accountable for complex projects get the early decisions right.