Engagement Delivery Guide

Table of Contents

1Introduction

2Initiating the Engagement

2.1Verifying Readiness for Service

2.2Conducting Internal Pre-Kickoff Meeting

2.3Customizing the Service and Creating a Baseline Agenda

3Engagement Phases

3.1Envision Phase (Kickoff and Scope)

3.1.1Pre-engagement Information Gathering Phase

3.1.2Kickoff Meeting

3.1.3Environment Review

3.1.4Engagement Schedule

3.2Plan Phase

3.2.1Information Gathering Interviews

3.2.2Select HADR and Backup Options

3.2.3Draft Scenario Report

3.3Build Phase

3.3.1Microsoft Azure Configuration

3.3.2Deploying SQL Server infrastructure in Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines

3.3.3Setup HADR and Backup Scenarios

3.4Stabilize

3.5Closeout Meeting

4References

Table 1 - Kickoff Agenda

Table 2 – Backup Options

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1 Introduction

The goal of this document is to provide you, the delivery consultant, specific guidance about what is required of you and your customer through the course of the engagement.Successful delivery of these requirements helps verify a successful engagement and value delivered to the customer.

The scope of the engagement is limited to a fixed set of activities with variations to thetimeline based on complexity and number of workloads defined as in scope during the initial negotiations.

2 Initiating the Engagement

Prior to engagement kick-off, the delivery consultant should gain familiarity with the state of customer by gathering information from available <Partner> Services.

2.1Verifying Readiness for Service

Use the documents included as part of this solution to help you deliver the engagement successfully. List the documents here with descriptions and review them as appropriate:

  • Statement of Work (SOW) template
  • Used to define the scope of the engagement and specify the anticipated activities
  • Kickoff and closeout presentation templates
  • Microsoft Office PowerPoint® templates to support you in conducting effective workshops
  • Vision and Scope template
  • Template for a <Partner> Services Delivery Methodology (MSDM) Vision and Scope document that you will adapt to the requirements of the specific customer environment
  • Build Guides
  • The build guides and associated scripts that are available for each of the scenarios to accelerate deployment
  • Conducting Internal Pre-Kickoff Meeting

Prior to meeting the customer, the delivery team should meet to review the customer’s needs and expectations, and the goals of both Microsoft and partners. This meeting is an opportunity for the delivery consultants (technical, business, and operations) to review and discuss existing knowledge and documentation about the customer.

Typically, the delivery consultants discuss each others’ skills and suitability for the project. It is essential that these matters are addressed prior to starting the on-site work. The consultants should determine the project agenda and agree on roles and responsibilities for this specific engagement.

Additionally, one of the team members must take ownership for arranging the logistics with the customer, including reserving rooms, obtaining audio/visual equipment, setting up building access, providing meals, and securing access to the right staff and information.

If the customer is a Premier Services customer, consult with the customer’s Technical Account Manager (TAM) to determine any salient facts that may present risks or opportunities in the implementation of the engagement. If Premier has conducted any recent risk assessments (RAPs) for the customer, those may also provide relevant information.

If the Account Technical Strategist or Technical Account Manager has completed an Infrastructure Optimization assessment for the customer, review the results of that assessment and survey.

2.3Customizing the Service and Creating a Baseline Agenda

The pre-kickoff meeting is the time to agree on the final agenda of the service. Delivery of the engagement depends on the existing customer environment.

Once you’ve established the overall engagement flow, you can fill in the baseline agenda with specific activities like workshop sessions, project management meetings, and report authoring.

The engagement provides a baseline schedule that must be customized to suit specific customer needs.

Important:Allocate yourself ample time on the schedule for authoring the customer deliverable documents or work products.

Based on the pre-kickoff meeting, the delivery consultant will have enough knowledge to select tools and interviewers when engaging with the customer.

The delivery consultant will also have enough knowledge to customize the schedule to suit a specific customer’s needs. This schedule should be confirmed and amended as needed after the kickoff meeting.

3 Engagement Phases

Use the information in this section to guide you through the engagement.

3.1Envision Phase (Kickoff and Scope)

3.1.1 Pre-engagement Information Gathering Phase

For this engagement to be successful, it is vitally important that it is delivered within the context of a specific customer situation and environment and it is essential to find out as much as you can before being on site for the first time.

Also be aware that the customer might not be able to answer specific questions for all scenarios appropriately, because of a general lack of understanding of the HADR/Backup options.

Important: Inform the customer of their responsibility of providing a Microsoft Azure subscription with Site to Site VPN connectivity as early as possible. The customer may choose to use an existing subscription or a new one just for this engagement.

The pre-engagement process is critical to confirm that both the client and <Partner> Services have aligned expectations for the engagement. The client should agree to provide a project manager to drive the engagement and help escalate issues to help to find solutions for any problem that could occur. Workloads, duration, and schedule should be discussed during this period.

3.1.2 Kickoff Meeting

The kickoff meeting is an important part of the engagement because it helps both Microsoft and the customer understand what the goals and the scope of the engagement are and what is required to successfully deliver the engagement within the given constraints. You will also discuss logistics for the time you will be on site, specifically regarding the activities that will be taking place and what is required to perform these activities.

Make use of the PowerPoint template provided as part of the Offering materials to guide you through the kickoff meeting. Depending on the size of the engagement, two to four hours will be needed for this workshop. The Kickoff presentation is meant to drive conversations, so use it as such rather than quickly flipping through the deck.

The agenda for this kickoff meeting (as contained in the PowerPoint template) is:

  • Introductions
  • Objectives
  • Review Challenges/Solution
  • Current Environment & Requirements
  • Engagement Overview
  • Scope & Timeline
  • Roles & Responsibilities
  • Next Steps and Action Items
  • Questions and Answers

When preparing for this meeting, adapt the following slides to the specific customer situation and engagement:

Table 1 - Kickoff Agenda

No. / Slide Title / Description
1 / Kickoff Presentation / Add date of presentation.
Consider adding your name and job description.
2 / Introductions / Hide either the “Microsoft” or “Partner” slide and fill it in appropriately.
3 / HADR/Backup Challenges / If necessary, modify the focus areas for this engagement and add specific items that you will address as part of this engagement (customer pain points).
4 / Scope / As described in the Statement of Work, add specific activities that you want to highlight as being in or out of scope (to reduce doubt). Because this reflects the Statement of Work, there should be no surprises for the customer on this slide.
5 / Offering Activities and Timeline / Adjust the timeline (number of weeks) for the various phases. This is a time boxed 4 week delivery.
6 / Schedule and Milestone / Using the table provided in the template, indicate a rough schedule with milestones to the customer. It is important for the timetable to highlight customer interaction points and milestones for deliverables.
7 / Communication Plan / Add specific details to the communications plan, also indicating who will be the primary point of contact for this engagement (you or the EM).
8 / Roles and Resources / Specify all the resources (from Microsoft and from the customer’s side) that will be part of the engagement. It is advisable to add some contact details for later reference.
9 / Next Steps and Action Items / Add some specific action items or next steps you want to highlight to the customer. These action items might be related to the Envision phase deliverables of the answers provided to the questionnaire.

3.1.2.1 Verifying Customer Benefits from Engagement

Engage all project stakeholders to confirm that expectations have been correctly set. The whole project team should have an understanding and buy in to the Vision and Scope for this engagement. They should understand the importance of the engagement, as well as how the engagement fits into an overarching program.

This discussion should include tangible customer benefits that will be identified by the engagement. Focus on technical, business, and operations aspects as appropriate. Sample items include:

  • Help me understand my environment.
  • Help me count the number and size of my databases.
  • Help me know if I am following current recommended practices.
  • Help me understand the difference between the options.
  • Help me know if my IT environment is configured appropriately.

When preparing for the engagement, you should consider:

  • What are the key decisions that the customer needs assistance to make?
  • What are the show stoppers that we can resolve?
  • Are there any fundamental knowledge gaps?
  • How can we bring the customer to a solution faster?
  • Assembling the Core Delivery Team

The engagement is created to be delivered by a virtual team with collective knowledge in, potentially, three disciplines: business value, technical, and operations.

The technical part of the engagement can be delivered by one or more consultants skilled enough to perform an audit of the environment by implementing a number of Microsoft and third-party tools, as well as conducting interviews with all relevant stakeholders. This means the customer must provide relevant resources — architect, administrators, and managers — that work with the consultant to achieve these goals.

3.1.2.3 Roles and Responsibilities

During the project kickoff meeting, it is critical that the roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and agreed to. This is especially important because of the tight timeline and rigid engagement model. At a minimum, the Microsoft consultant should know who the primary point of contact will be while on site to verify the customer is constantly engaged and providing the required information. You must make it clear that the customer’s staff will be asked for assistance during the various activities as well as any interviews that may be required. Make it known that there are deadlines and milestones, specifically around decisions on which databases to use for this engagement and which scenarios the customer wants to see.

Similarly, make it clear to the customer who the points of contact will be for this engagement from the Microsoft side and who is responsible for delivering what, as part of the engagement. This should be closely tied to the communication plan that is also agreed as part of the kickoff process.

3.1.2.4 Vision, Scope, and Risks

It is important that the scope of work is reviewed based on the signed work order (WO) and associated statement of work (SOW). A Vision and Scope template has been provided in the offering materials. Use this template to document the scope details.

You will need to discuss, agree on, and document what is considered in scope (servers, domains, locations, workloads, applications, operating systems, and hardware) and out of scope for the time that you will be there, because this level of detail is not specified in the SOW.

As part of the discussion, make sure that time is spent on identifying potential risks and how those risks can be mitigated. This initial risk assessment should also be documented in the Vision and Scope document.

When starting to specify the scope of this engagement, you should now be in agreement with the customer in terms of the following items:

  • Problem statement
  • Customer situation (also identifying the business opportunity)
  • Vision and benefits
  • Requirements
  • Scope (specifying the list of the SQL Serverdatabases\workloads to use)
  • Acceptance and operational criteria (for example, location and equipment)
  • Constraints and risks

These factors are the building blocks for producing the Vision and Scope document for this engagement. This should be a fairly straightforward task due to the fact that this offering is all about analyzing the workloads only, and no changes to the customer IT environment whatsoever are foreseen as deliverables. A template for the Vision and Scope document is provided as part of the offering materials.

3.1.3 Environment Review

Before the Vision and Scope is finalized and documented, you should review the current environment and customers processes.

It is important to determine if the customer has a current technology road map. Such a map might be implied or explicitly written. The relationship of the customer’s road map to the Microsoft road map should be considered by the delivering consultant. This is particularly true when preparing recommendations as a result of the engagement.

This is a good time to review the HADR and backup options and ask the customer to start considering which ones are most relevant to them.

The responses to the current environment assessment from the customer are important inputs for the Vision and Scope creation process. Be sure to share all of these documents with the customer after the meeting. Expect this meeting to take two to four hours (depending on the size of the engagement).

There are no mandatory deliverables as a result of this exercise.

3.1.4 Engagement Schedule

It is the EM’s responsibility to discuss this schedule with the customer and get their agreement. Get in touch with the EM to discuss this timetable (especially considering on-site and off-site times and customer touch points) and make sure the customer agrees with your schedule by the end of the first week.

Engagement Schedule

Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri
Account Team (work starts two weeks prior to On-site Week 1) / Account Team verifies the customer is ready to start by ensuring a Microsoft Azure subscription is ready to use and that it has VPN connectivity.
On-site Week 1 / Kickoff meeting
Project preparation
Start validation of customer Microsoft Azure environment / Create the initial project plan
Create the Conditions of Satisfaction document / Start validation of existing on-premises SQL Server instance. / Complete validation and assessment of on-premises SQL Server instance. / Submit initial project plan, Vision and Scope document, and Conditions of Satisfaction to customer for acceptance
End-of-day team meeting
On-site Week 2 / Customer status meeting
Start identifying databases to be in scope / Continue database identification
Start identifying HADR and backup options for selected databases / Continue identifying HADR and backup options (if needed)
Run tools to capture database info (if needed) / Complete activities from previous day / Create draft version scenario report for internal review
End-of-day team meeting
Off-site Week 3 / Customer status meeting or conference call
Start Microsoft Azure configuration / Complete Microsoft Azure configuration
Review scenario report with customer / Complete Microsoft Azure Configuration (if needed)
Build SQL Server environment and smoke test functionality and connectivity.
Configure SQL Servers (on-premises and in cloud) for HADR and backup scenarios.
On-site Week 4+
(size-dependent) / Customer status meeting / Continue with SQL Server environment in Microsoft Azure(if needed)
System validation testing
Assess the deployed environment with the customer
Solution walkthrough / Customer closeout meeting (typically on-site)

3.2Plan Phase

After having agreed on a Vision and Scope document and the engagement schedule with the customer, the selection of databases is started in the Plan phase.

In broad terms, the following activities will take place during this phase:

  • Identify the databases that will be used in the various HADR scenarios
  • Review the HADR and backup options for each of the selected databases.
  • Conduct interviews with individual workload stakeholders.
  • Discuss changes in operational processes as a result of using Microsoft Azure as a backup target and for HADR purposes.
  • If applicable, customer runs non-Microsoft tools to capture inventory of databases and data, and report results to Microsoft.

The output of this phase, as defined in the statement of work (SOW), is:

  • A scenario report outlining the selected databases to be in scope for use in this engagement.
  • Information Gathering Interviews

During interview, you should gather information about the database types, workloads they support, size and tolerable data loss and time. In addition to the technical information, it is important to gather the current processes the customer uses in case of HADR or restoring databases.

Some of the technical questions to ask may be:

  • What is the database used for? Does it need to be synchronized with the application?
  • How large is the database?
  • How often do backups or replication copies need to be taken? This defines the recovery point objective (RPO).
  • What is the acceptable time to restore the database? This defines the recovery time objective (RTO).

Operational questions also are a key part of HADR and backup. Some questions may be:

  • What is the current process to restore a database? For example, does a network operations department initiate or is there a ticketing system used?
  • How are backups and disaster recovery (DR) copies verified or tested?
  • What level of involvement does the workload owner have while the IT department is performing a restore?

People to consider will be:

  • Database and workload owners (IT or business)
  • Business unit IT managers and IT-to-business representatives or liaisons
  • IT operations (responsible for running and maintaining these servers)
  • IT database administrators (responsible for building and maintaining these workloads)
  • External partners or vendors (operations or development)
  • End users or end-user representatives

Having 1:1 meetings or conference calls with these stakeholder groups will help you in understanding the pain points, implementation details, and business and IT priorities associated with these workloads. When planning and conducting interviews, be sure to consider the following issues: