Introduction
As a child and young man, I was involved in swimming. Many an hour was spent within the swim lane, every week, early morning and evening. This culminated in some races/galas that I took part in and sometimes I was able to bring home a medal, a smile, and some chlorinated hair.
Eventually, I reached the stage where the effort vs. the reward was not worth it. In hindsight, this was a mistake and partly brought on by misjudging the benefits and rewards I was getting from the experience. The way I was judging the success I achieved from the sport was narrow, limited, and lacked the vision for my future benefit.
Do I base my success criteria on winning, or do I look at every angle and assess all the benefits?
Health, Activity, Team, Interaction, Determination, Hope, Losing, Winning, Learning, Friends, Appearance, Achievement, Pride, Proud, Smiles, Foundation, Handling Nerves, Social, Muscles/Tone, Cardio, Family, Asthma, Depression, Relax, Destress, Energy.
Above are some positive buzzwords that highlight and broaden the different aspects of success criteria that I should have had a view of back in the day. It is important not to limit the success in anything to one goal. After all, it is not the endgame that matters, but what you learn on the way.
(We did have to wear Speedos back in the day, which is a definite negative. Fortunately, I learn from my mistakes.)
Before this article, I wrote an article some time back addressing some negative comments about the Citrix Cloud here:
http://citxen.co.uk/2018/07/15/13-reasons-why-you-should-use-citrix-cloud/
As suggested by the title, I provided 13 very good reasons to embark on the Citrix Cloud transformation journey. This article will blow that out of the water in a manner of ‘writing’. I will introduce the success spectrum spectacular ‘Cloud Success Services’ that will be your stepping stone, helping you on your path to success towards the endgame and beyond!
This broadening of success criteria is something that you must be aware of in Citrix Cloud deployments or any project delivery. When you embark on a project, how are you going to measure that success? There are various criteria that you should think about from the start.
Step 1 -Why Cloud?
Step 1 is crucial and can be further broken down:
The Citrix Cloud ‘Use Case’ requires some understanding. Some, or all of the following might be part of the strategy that is adopted:
Understand the use case. For example, is it to increase productivity or implement an effective DR strategy? It could be that the use case is geared towards the cost, in turn, this leads to a ‘Business Outcome’ of a BYOD initiative which leads to certain ‘Success Criteria’ which does not fall short of reducing support tickets, improving user experience, enhancing security and access. Be realistic about setting a time frame. Break it down into steps so you can present the rewards back to the business and stakeholders.
Step 2 – Starting Position
What is your entry into the project? Are you transitioning from an existing on-prem Citrix environment or transitioning from a non-Citrix environment? You could be building a new Citrix Cloud environment from scratch or developing the Citrix Cloud for a specific use case.
Identifying where the resources will be deployed should be understood. On-premises (No kitten died) and Public Cloud such as Azure?
Step 3 – User Target
Identify the apps and users that you wish to take on the transformation journey. Start simple and build upon that success. Identifying the correct applications and users to initiate the project and increase the confidence back to the Stakeholders will, in turn, provide you the required backing from the Business.
Step 4 – Success
We have already touched upon setting achievement goals along the journey which are defined through understanding the ‘use cases’ Citrix Cloud can present. The below tables should provide success goals to work towards and achieve, based on the use case.
The advantages listed exceed the 13 reasons I originally wrote about. Plus, did you know there are a whole host of Enterprise features the Citrix Cloud has?
Here are just some of the features that might have slipped by.
Step 5 – Assistance
Do not take the burden of delivering a successful project alone. It is important that we identify the correct personnel to assist and help shape the solution to the desired outcome. Find the person who knows the Citrix Environment and knows its cracks and creaks. Understand the known issues of the day and work to improve on the user annoyances. Have key contacts that can report back the success of the project after each phase. Remember to start small and build upon this success.
Step 6 – Results
This is more about how you present results back to the business. Setting an achievable project timeline and breaking this into goals will help.
Break the project into 6 distinct phases:
From the 6 distinct phases above, you will be able to identify realistic project goals and minimize any disappointment with expectations.
Conclusion
Citrix Cloud CVADS is certainly, more than ever before, an Enterprise fit for purpose solution to deliver Applications and Desktops to users. It is a bunch of services hosted by Citrix that the customer will utilize and administer. The key to successful implementation is to understand the use case, business outcome, success criteria and finally set a realistic time frame. However, do not take my word for it. Citrix has supplied those embarking on the transformation journey a tool. This is part of the Citrix Cloud Success Services which helps you adopt the above methodology.
Visit https://success.citrix.com
You will be able to start a ‘Success Plan.’
Gareth Carson
Enterprise Architect Capgemini
Twitter: @Citxen
Email: Citxenblog@gmail.com
#Capgemini