In March 2016, the interim manager took on the mandate to support an IT carve-out. At the same time, he was tasked with setting up the IT of the company to be spun off and managing it after the carve-out. The project took place under extreme time pressure: There were only 15 months to plan a global organization with 120 employees.
The carve-out created a tier 1 supplier in the automotive sector. The primary goal of the IT migration had to be to guarantee global delivery capability as quickly as possible after the go-live to ensure that the company's customers could continue production without disruption.
Cloud-first strategy selected for the carve-out and team set up
- The most important subtasks of the interim manager were:
- Designing and planning the future IT strategy
- Coordinating the global stakeholders
- Building a team of IT specialists
- Tendering and selecting the external IT operations partner
- Going live with the company's own IT at the end of the carve-out
On the recommendation of the interim manager, the management of the newly created company opted for a clear cloud-first strategy. This relies on obtaining as many components as possible from the cloud without any changes (as a service). In this way, the need for faster adaptations with a low TCO (total cost of ownership) can be met. The interim manager managed the tender and ultimately selected a suitable service provider in consultation with the client.
In parallel, he drove forward the development of the new IT team. A total of 120 positions needed to be filled. The interim manager was able to successfully fill the first two management levels in cooperation with headhunters and agencies. He supported the further recruitment process in an advisory capacity.
Divesting company had planned migration and go-live as a big bang
The real challenge in this project was taking responsibility for the IT of the carve-out from the go-live: the divesting company, a global automotive supplier with almost 400,000 employees, had set up the IT for the carve-out according to the standards of a large corporation and planned both the migration and the go-live in a big bang. This primarily included:
- 5,500 PCs
- 200 servers
- 440 legacy applications
- A WAN with globally distributed locations
- A complete transition data center.
Predictive crisis management and emergency processes ensure delivery capability
The client's decision to big-bang this more than extensive project proved to be a dangerous step: on day 1, almost nothing worked because the basic infrastructure and network components were not fully configured and sometimes incorrectly configured. In addition, not all application interfaces were configured for the correct hardware components. For example, the barcode scanners in the distribution warehouses could no longer find their inventory management system.
A race against time ensued. The interim manager had anticipated such chaotic conditions and set up a crisis management system with processes and emergency systems. His overview of the parts of the company and good cooperation with the locations enabled him to set the right priorities. As a result, all customers were supplied on time at all times. Although the customers noticed that not everything was running smoothly, their production was not affected.
In the following months, the interim manager worked with the IT team to further stabilize and normalize the infrastructure and application landscape.
