Retirement

Definition

Retirement is the activity consisting of the cohesive collection of all tasks that are primarily performed to remove (i.e., retire) something from service.

Goals

The typical goals of retirement are to:

• Cease usage of the thing being retired (see examples below).

Objectives

The typical objectives of retirement are to:

• Cease operations/usage in an orderly manner.
• Retire any associated documentation.
• Retire any associated data, hardware, and software components.
• Ensure minimal disruption to:
  • Business operations
  • Stakeholders (e.g., users)
  • External systems that depend on the thing being retired
• Obtain relevant stakeholder acceptance of the retirement.

Examples

Typical examples of the retirement activity include:

• Application Retirement:
  • Retire a single software application
  • Retire a single system
  • Retire multiple related systems
• Contact Center Retirement
• Data Center Retirement
• Environment Retirement
• Data Component Retirement
• Hardware Component Retirement
• Software Component Retirement

Preconditions

Retirement typically may begin when the following conditions hold:

• Something has been selected for retirement.
• The retirement team is initially staffed and adequately trained in the retirement tasks.

Completion Criteria

Retirement is typically complete when the following conditions hold:

• The documentation has been retired (e.g., archived or properly disposed of).
• The components have been retired (e.g., archived, transferred to other applications, or sold).
• The application, center, or component is no longer in use.

Tasks

Retirement typically involves the following teams performing the following retirement tasks in an iterative, incremental, parallel, and time-boxed manner:

• Retirement Team:
  • Retirement Planning
  • Retirement Notification
  • Operations Termination
  • Component Archival
  • Component Disposal
  • Documentation Archival
  • Documentation Disposal

Environments

Retirement is typically performed using the following environment(s) and associated tools:

• Production Environment:
  • Documentation Tools
  • Configuration Management Tools

Work Products

Retirement typically results in the production of the following work products:

• Retirement Plan
• Retirement Notification
• Archived components
• Updated external dependent systems

Phases

Retirement tasks are typically performed during the following phases:

• Business Strategy: Not Applicable
• Business Optimization: Ongoing (obsolete centers only)
• Initiation: Not Applicable
• Construction: Not Applicable
• Delivery: Not Applicable
• Usage: Ongoing (obsolete components only)
• Retirement: Completed

Guidelines

• Retirement is closely related to the development activities involved in updating dependent systems so that they no longer depend on the system/component/center being retired.