Delivery · February 2025 · 6 min
The operating cadence after go-live
The system starts its job when the project team wants to leave.
Hypercare ends, the tickets slow, and a dangerous quiet arrives. The design is no longer in anyone's weekly meeting. Vendor releases pile up because the last upgrade hurt. The benefits slide from the roadmap becomes a historical document. The ERP is 'in,' which is not the same as working.
Keep a cadence that is slightly boring. A monthly note: what broke, what was changed, what is waiting. A quarterly hour on the original outcomes — the inventory, the close, the margin — against the baseline you bothered to write down. A release decision that is explicit, even when the decision is to wait.
Recurring tickets are design. If the same adjustment posts every Friday, the routine or the system is wrong. Fixing the ticket without fixing the cause is how estates grow superstitious.
The firm that implemented you may not be the firm that should keep you. That is fine. What should not be fine is a live system with no memory of why it was shaped this way. Leave the memory in the operating note, not in a departed project manager's inbox.