Like most organizations, Pillsbury Law faced a common challenge: migrating to a modern Windows OS while limiting business disruption and maintaining security. Previous migrations had been labor-intensive and error prone, relying on spreadsheets for management.
Tom Rose, Pillsbury's OS Migration Program Manager, wanted a solution to automate the migration and run future IT projects as Business-as-Usual. The migration of tens of thousands of users with countless dependencies presented a daunting challenge, necessitating automated scheduling and orchestration for effective management. He chose Juriba's Digital Platform Conductor (DPC), due to the critical nature of the project and Juriba's track record of success with many of the world's largest organizations.
However, he wasn’t prepared for just how smooth and error-free the project turned out to be. Tom Rose, the PMO Director at Pillsbury Law, said:
"Our schedules were pretty aggressive. If I hadn't had Juriba to help manage this upgrade, it could have gone poorly, I would have needed more resources, or it would have taken much longer."
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP (short: Pillsbury Law) is an international law firm with offices around the world.
The Financial Times has recognized the forward-thinking firm as one of the Most Innovative Law Firms for three years running.
Pillsbury Law is also leading the pack of AmLaw 100 firms with the 12th-highest percentage of Chambers-ranked lawyers.
Upon joining Pillsbury Law as their new PMO Director, Tom discovered the lengthy and labor-intensive task of migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7. The previous migration had relied heavily on manual processes and spreadsheets, lacking the capability to collect and manage project information centrally. Consequently, the team conducted numerous interviews and manually coordinated over a thousand users. Recognizing the need for a more strategic approach, Tom sought to implement self-service and automation, supported by the appropriate tools to execute his vision. Turning to Juriba, he aimed to address six key pain points, all to ensure a seamless migration experience.
Improve user experience. The firm knows that its people are its greatest asset and IT treats them as VIPs. So creating a smooth, consistent, and pleasant user experience was the number one priority. The firm’s high profile lawyers and their staff are focused on client work, and do not have the extra time to talk with IT about their OS migration. This meant minimizing unnecessary user involvement, such as lengthy interviews to create user profiles.
Run multiple projects simultaneously. The IT team provided new computers simultaneously with the OS upgrade because the lawyers' devices were due for a hardware refresh. Therefore, Tom needed to find an IT Transformation tool to manage multiple projects side-by-side.
Reduce manual labor. The previous migration was very labor-intensive, which slowed the project down. In the past, floorwalkers manually recorded answers to 21 questions, e.g., the preferred screen resolution or which applications the users want/need — taking up 10-30 minutes of users' time.
Streamline employee communication and enable self-service. While IT wanted to minimize unnecessary user involvement, the team wanted to encourage their voluntary involvement by leveraging Self-Service and IT automation. He knew that—without a proper tool that automated and tracked responses based on an aggressive schedule—it would be difficult, if not impossible, to effectively manage change at the pace required by firm leadership.
Centralized Command & Control. Since the firm has offices worldwide, Tom wanted a central command and control center that allowed everyone on the team to immediately see the exact scope or status of the project without having to compile dozens of spreadsheets.
Increase Business-as-usual capabilities. Since Microsoft's modern OS requires frequent updates, the IT team wanted to ensure that the tool they chose would be able to manage future updates using repeatable and scalable processes in a Business-as-Usual manner.
Juriba's solution became the cornerstone of Tom's pitch to executive management and key stakeholders, gaining resounding approval for its innovative approach.
Opting for Juriba's Digital Platform Conductor proved pivotal for the firm, with Juriba Professional Services swiftly tailoring the platform to meet their unique project demands and establish a robust project framework, Pillsbury expedited the project's launch from weeks to mere days, setting a new standard for efficiency and effectiveness.
The project kicked off by gathering user requirements — but this time, instead of having to schedule appointments to interview each end user, the team sent out more than a thousand validation requests by email, including a pre-populated user and application profile that was automatically created from AD and SCCM (Now MECM).
This allowed the end users to confirm information in their own time. All they had to do was verify or amend the data, and IT could track who had responded and who needed reminding. The shift to self-service improved response rates dramatically, with over two-thirds of staff completing their surveys after receiving the first notification. The team was now able to manage by exception rather than having to manage everyone, which led to substantial time savings.
Once migration readiness was confirmed, desktop users were routed directly to deployment. Juriba DPC then sent laptop selection requests asking users to choose a new laptop from a pre-approved list of options. On average, users responded within three days. Selections were tracked and monitored with reminder emails being sent where necessary. The few remaining users were contacted manually to complete the process. Once the employee clicked on the link to select a model, they were directed to Juriba DPC Self-Service portal where they were presented with a selection screen including images and quick stats of the pre-selected devices. In total, the company ordered over 1,000 new laptops.
To save time, money and resources, Pillsbury decided to centralize customization and deployment of all devices in their Nashville offices. With the precise level of information gathered through the process, Juriba helped the Nashville team streamline the purchasing, configuration, and setup of the machines with all the required specifications.
Tom Rose, Pillsbury Law
The migration started with domestic offices and was then deployed internationally, with over 90% of the migration being completed within 4 months.
The team had to manage 12 separate dependency tasks per user: 5 for Pre-Migration, 3 for Training, 4 for Deployment — each of which were fully managed and tracked within Juriba's Digital Platform Conductor.
Because of the DPC's central command and control capability, the IT staff at Pillsbury Law was able to understand from a project management point of view where things were in real-time. For example:
Throughout the process, Pilsbury was able to cross-check with drop sheets generated automatically by Juriba.
As they completed a milestone through the workflow, they would record the progress of each step within the tool, turning the user status from red (not ready) to amber (in progress), and then green (ready).
Tom and his executive management have received exceptional feedback from employees, which was one of their strategic goals. Going forward, Pillsbury Law is planning on managing their Windows-as-a-Service update deployments and their application management through Juriba's DPC. It has become the go-to tool for managing IT deployments.
Tom Rose, Pillsbury Law
Request a call back from one of our team, and lets help you create your success story.