Charlie Croker's gold heist in Turin goes perfectly: the traffic computer, the jam, the Minis through the arcades and down the steps. Then the coach ends up hanging over a cliff with the gold at the wrong end. The Italian Job is the best warning in cinema about a go-live plan that works right up to the last scene.
The Italian Job (1969) is the story of a perfect plan. Charlie Croker, fresh out of prison, inherits a scheme to steal gold from an armoured convoy in Turin. The crew swaps the city's traffic-control tape, causes the biggest traffic jam in history, and escapes in three Minis through shopping arcades, along rooftops, down church steps and through the sewers.
It all works. Right up until the last scene, when the getaway coach skids on a mountain road and ends up balanced over a cliff edge, the crew at one end and the gold at the other. The film ends there, literally on a cliffhanger.
That's a go-live with no contingency plan. Here's what the film teaches about getting to the end of the road.
Croker didn't write the plan. He inherited it from a man who didn't live to carry it out, and he had to make it his own.
For your project: plenty of projects change hands: a new partner after the first one failed, a new project manager halfway through, a consultant replaced. An inherited plan has to be re-read, challenged and re-owned, not just picked up and run. Every assumption in it was made by someone who isn't here any more. (See continuity is king.)
Mr Bridger bankrolls the job from prison. He can't see what's happening; he has to trust the crew and the reports he gets.
For your project: your sponsor is often in the same position: funding the project, but not in the room every day. They're relying on what they're told. Give them honest reports, early warnings and decisions that need their authority, not a summary that says everything is fine. (See you can't handle the truth.)
In rehearsal, the explosives man uses far too much and destroys the whole van. It's the most famous line in the film.
For your project: over-engineering is the ERP version. Fifty customisations where five would do. A big-bang go-live for everything when finance could go first. A twenty-page approval workflow for a £50 purchase. Use exactly as much force as the job needs, and no more. (See old customisations and phased or big bang.)
The whole plan depends on replacing the tape in Turin's traffic-control computer at exactly the right moment. If that fails, nothing else works.
For your project: that's your integrations. The web shop, the EDI link to your biggest customer, the bank feed, the warehouse scanners. They're the dependency everything else relies on, and they're where go-lives fail. Test every one end to end before the weekend, switch them on one at a time during cut-over, and know how to switch each one back. (See APIs done properly.)
The Minis' route through Turin isn't improvised. It's planned and practised: which arcade, which steps, which sewer.
For your project: rehearse the migration and the cut-over until the route is known: what runs in what order, how long each step takes, who does it. (See the go-live weekend, hour by hour.)
And then the last scene. The plan had a beginning and a middle, and no end. Nobody had thought about what happens after the getaway, so the gold, the crew and the coach end up balanced over a drop with no plan B.
For your project: a go-live plan has to cover what happens when something goes wrong, not just what happens when it goes right:
On the cliff edge, every move the crew makes tips the balance. Move towards the gold and the coach goes over.
For your project: the first weeks after go-live are a balancing act too: users still learning, a backlog of small fixes, month-end arriving. Don't load the new system with every enhancement and wish-list item at once. Stabilise first, then add weight carefully.
Croker's last line. We never find out what the idea was.
Don't let your go-live end the same way. Have the great idea before you need it: the rollback plan, the go/no-go criteria, the hypercare rota. Then if the coach does start to tip, you already know which way to move.
If you'd like your go-live plan reviewed before the weekend, including the bit after the getaway, book a 30-minute call.
