Delivery and Implementation Management
This domain tests planning, dependency control, release management and cutover readiness. The exam focuses on whether you can move a designed solution into production without surprising the business.
Plans and dependencies
- Identify the critical path; float shows where schedule risk can be absorbed.
- Model dependency types: finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish and start-to-finish.
- Use a definition of ready and a definition of done so work is not declared complete prematurely.
- Maintain environment parity across development, test, staging and production; configuration drift causes release failures.
Release and cutover
Deployment installs software in an environment; release exposes it to users. Feature flags and dark launches let you decouple the two. A cutover plan names sequence, owners, go/no-go criteria, rollback triggers and communication. Plan a hypercare window with elevated support.
Worked example
Task A takes 5 days. B depends finish-to-start on A and takes 3 days. C also depends finish-to-start on A and takes 4 days. D depends on both B and C and takes 2 days. Path A-B-D is 10 days; A-C-D is 11 days, so the critical path is A-C-D and B has one day of float. The reasoning: float belongs to B relative to the longer path, so delaying B by one day is safe unless another dependency changes.
Traps
- Conflating deployment with release and announcing go-live before users can access the feature.
- Omitting rollback criteria or rehearsing cutover only on paper.
- Ignoring environment drift and configuration differences.
- Planning teams to 100% utilization, leaving no capacity for defects or dependencies.