Four Steps to Modern IBM i Change Management
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Our unique approach helps you implement a solution that is tailormade for your environment. Using best practice standards, we guide you through requirements gathering, project planning, and training. In the process, you gain experience with MDChange product capabilities that will open new horizons in your development efforts.
When you engage MD-NA for services, you get an implementation coordinator and a whole team of specialists at your disposal. Your coordinator will be your primary contact throughout your engagement, and they will bring in additional technical experts based on your configuration requirements.
Since modernization and workflow are such key success factors, we can even assist with your DevOps strategy, utilizing our solutions and connecting to existing tools within your enterprise through REST APIs.
Four Steps to Implementing MDChange
Step 1
Pre-Implementation & Requirements Gathering
- Focused on requirements, methodology, and initial education.
- Introduce MDChange features including MDRapid and MDTransform.
- Provide best practices for management, developers, and support teams.
- Requirements gathering and initial system review.
- Identify what works and does not work in your current environment.
Step 2
Configuration & Training
- Product configuration and change management administrator training.
- Define libraries per environment for source control and tracking as well as for MDXREF object/field level cross referencing.
- Configuration to support source in either source files, the IFS, or in a Git/SVN repository.
- Build strong test environment synchronization including program objects and the ability to automatically update test data periodically or on demand.
- Data migration – Our migration tool supports moving from most legacy change management vendors. MD-NA can help you bring over archived source, object history, and specialized commands from existing databases.
- Midrange Dynamics APIs enable CI/CD pipeline integration with tools from other vendors.
- Development team training includes moving your work in progress directly into MDChange.
Step 3
Support
We have found that aftercare is critical for a successful implementation. We provide support beyond training to ensure customer satisfaction and a smooth transition to using your new tools. Your implementation specialist will be available after you go live with MDChange and will provide:- Immediate support as needed.
- Assistance with any necessary configuration adjustments.
- Weekly meetings with admins and/or development team members until everyone is comfortable with their new roles and responsibilities.
Step 4
Evolution
We believe in evolution not revolution. We don’t expect our customers to completely upend their business practices to implement our tools. It is our job as implementation specialists to assist each customer in outlining the critical elements in their environment that need to be under MDChange control. This may mean they start by transitioning to a new tool and then incorporate additional support. Our experience has taught us that providing a strong foundation such as MDChange means that a customer can easily take the next steps towards DevOps, agile development strategies, and participating in a CI/CD pipeline. We work with each of our new customers to help them understand their environment and configure MDChange for optimal performance.