Leading a Brownfield Transformation: The Integrated Plan

Keep this: job aid

Brownfield program lead's card

• Program plan = cycles, gates, cross-stream dependencies, calendar, key people, external dates.
• Backbone: sandbox, CMD, CMQ, Mock 1, Mock 2, dress rehearsal, production.
• Retrofit every ECC change made after the CMD conversion into CMD; tighten the rule until the freeze.
• Every cycle: one primary goal, 3–6 measures with owners, a scoring rule, a gate; misses carry forward.
• Gate criteria are checkable facts; thresholds approved before the gate and changed only going forward.
• Outcomes: pass, conditional pass (owner, date, next-gate check), fail; cap carried conditions.
• Dependency register: both owners, needed-by date, status, fallback; weekly review of red and amber rows.
• Track external dates (ECC, SolMan 7.2, PO 7.5) and don’t stack a middleware move on the conversion.
• Weekend clock: go/no-go 1 mid-SUM, go/no-go 2 after finance sign-off, latest fallback = Mon 06:00 − fallback − margin.
• Facilitate with evidence and real options; pre-write go, delay and fallback messages.