Professional Services Process¶

This document outlines the process for professional services engagements at HashiCorp.

flowchart TD
    A([Sales Handover]) --> B[Discovery]
    B --> C[/Engagement Scope/]
    C --> D[/Project Detail Record/]
    D --> E[Implementation]

    E --> F1{Complete?}

    F1 -- No --> F[/Update Project Detail Record/]
    F -- Link --> E

    F1 -- Yes --> G[Validation]
    G --> I[Acceptance]
    I --> J[Support Handover]
    J --> K[Sales and Finance Handover]
    K --> L([Complete])

kanban
  column1[Column Title]
    task1[Task Description]

Sales Handover¶

The sales handover should be handled in two emails. One from sales to the serviecs team and another from sales to the customer

Services email should contain the T&Cs link with the relevant information

Cato: Sales handover to services or Internet: Sales handover to services

Subject: Handing Over [Company Name] to Services Team

Dear [Customer Name],

We are pleased to inform you that the sales process for your [Project Name] has been successfully concluded, and we are now handing over your account to our services team to work with you on the professional services that were included as part of your purchase on the 14^th. H₂O by pressing Tab on the keyboard, the Del.

Key Points:

• Services Lead: [Name of Services Team Project Manager]
• Contact Information: services@loadbalancer.org
• Timeline: [Expected timeline for project completion]

Next Steps and process overview:

1. Discovery call. The services team will contact you with a pre-discovery call questionnaire and to make arrangements for the discovery call. The purpose of the discovery call is to better understand your technical requirements and the proposed environment.
2. Engagement Scope. Based on the information gained from the discovery call; we will determine the scope of the engagement. That being, we document and communicate the scope of the engagement to the customer. This will be sent to the customer via email for review and approval.
3. Project Detail Record (PDR). Using the information gained from the discovery call; the services team will construct a PDR that details the load balancer configuration to achieve the requirements and deliverables outlined in the Engagement Scope. The PDR is a living document that will be updated throughout the engagement with the most recent and relevant information.
4. Implementation. The services team will schedule in the implementation of the load balancer configuration. There will generally be multiple iterations of the implementation, as the team will work closely with the customer to ensure that the implementation meets their requirements. The PDR should be updated throughout the implementation process to reflect the most recent and relevant information.
5. Project complete. Once the project is complete, the PDR will be used to generate the customer and support handover documents.

The parts that are expected¹

Please feel free to reach out to [Project Manager] with any questions or concerns regarding the project moving forward. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition and providing you with excellent service.

Thank you for choosing [Company Name]. We look forward to working closely with you on this project.

Best regards,

[Your Name]
[Your Position]
[Sales Department]
[Company Name]

Professional Services Engagements (PSE) are sold by the sales team so they are the first point of contact for any information that should come through. As part of the sales process the customer should have been provided with a Professional Services Agreement/T's & C's. This is a document that outlines our's and the customer's responsibilities throughout the course of the PSE.

can we store the customer TSDs for a period of one year(?) to provide enough information for a support handover document

• Who is the customer?
• What are they load balancing?
• Do they have a high-level design of the proposed implementation or network environment?
• What timezone are they in?

Kick off¶

overview of the process

guidelines for interactions

set expectations

Discovery¶

Before a Statement of Work (SoW) can be put together a pre-engagement/discovery call will be required to assess the needs and scope of the PSE.

Pre-discovery call questionnaire¶

Pre-discovery call questionnaire

The pre-discovery call questionnaire should be sent out to get as many details as possible from the customer and to also prompt the customer to provide any additional information that may be required. To ensure that all parties are as productive as they can be during this call a questionnaire should be sent to the customer to ascertain as much information as possible and ensure the customer is able to provide all the information required.

• Network Platform/switching Fabric: For example, is it Cisco ACI or something similar? There are some known issues with specific network platforms and having that information ahead of time can allow us to expect and work around these issues.

Schedule Discovery Call¶

Book in the discovery call, should be done via the booking link. Ideally this will be a one-time booking link as we don't want customers to be able to use it whenever they want.

Statement of work¶

You should aim to fully complete an SoW based on the information from the discovery call and the pre-discovery questionnaire. All information should be captured and rendered within but allow for a single revision of the document. If it appears that multiple revisions of the document will be required, move to schedule another call to gain all the information required.

Templates could be the way forward

• Medical Deployments
• Storage Deployments
• WAF Deployments
• Telephony (MetaSwitch)

Implementation¶

The customer handover document should begin here, this will be a working document that captures what was ACTUALLY configured on the system. The SoW is what we plan to configure but this will be the TRUTH of what is installed. This should also include the functional testing for each of the virtual services and/or GSLB configurations agreed in the SoW (as a minimum).

Schedule implementation¶

Book in the discovery call, should be done via the booking link. Ideally this will be a one-time booking link as we don't want customers to be able to use it whenever they want.

Configuration/Implementation Session¶

Testing/Validation¶

We need to assemble a set of questions that we can put to the customer where we can not validate the solution ourselves. For the most part, this will be the case, we will not be able to fully test and ratify the system and guarantee the system viability.

Acceptance¶

To ensure that the customer is satisfied that the goals and requirements are satisfied and the PSE can be closed off as successful.

Support & Sales Handover¶

The support handover document aims to provide the support team with the information required to assist the customer as swiftly as possible in any future communications.

There should also be a summary and notice of completion that is sent to the sales team to ensure that it is marked as complete in salesforce and Xero.

a summary of - the customer's original requirements - the engagement - the outcomes

Notes on the perceived knowledge level of the customer Anything of particular note that was experienced during the engagement - network complications or oddities. - connecting into the system. how the system was left after the engagement was concluded.

Pages Notes¶

Mermaid Sequence Diagram¶

sequenceDiagram
    participant ST as Sales Team
    participant LI as Linear App
    participant SOW as Statement of Work
    participant CE as Client Engineer
    participant CS as Customer
    ST->>CS: Generate and send Professional Services Terms & Conditions
    ST->>LI: Task Created in Linear App
    LI->>LI: Task automatically assigned to Pipeline
    Note over LI: Pipeline
    LI->>CE: Task Assigned to Client Engineer
    LI->>LI: Task automatically assigned to Discovery
    Note over LI: Discovery
    CE->>CS: Send pre-discovery Questionnaire
    CS->>CE: Questionnaire response
    CE->>LI: Move to Statement of Work
    Note over LI: Statement of Work
    CE->>SOW: Pre-fill SoW with questionnaire responses
    CE->>CS: Arrange Discovery Call
    Note over CE, CS: Discovery Call
    CE->>SOW: Update SoW
    SOW->>CE: Send SoW to customer
    CE->>CS: Send SoW to customer
    alt SoW Update Required
        loop Until Accepted
            CS->>SOW: SoW not accepted, update required
            SOW->>CE: Send SoW to customer
            CE->>CS: Send SoW to customer
        end
    else SoW Accepted
        CS->>CE: SoW Accepted
        CE->>CS: Arrange Implementation
    end
    CE->>LI: Move to Planned
    Note over LI: Planned
    Note over CE, CS: Configuration Implementation
    alt Implementation Incomplete
        CE->>LI: Move to In Progress
        Note over LI: In Progress
        loop Until Implementation Complete
            CE->>CS: Arrange additional implementation
            Note over CE, CS: Configuration Implmentation
        end
    else Implementation Complete
        CE->>LI: Move to Complete
        Note over LI: Complete
        LI->>ST: Task Complete in Linear App
        ST->>CS: Generate and send Customer PS Acceptance Document 
    end