DE Toolkit Week 4 Solo Cutover
Training Program

Week 4 Solo Cutover

Week 4 — Solo Cutover & Certification

Time commitment: Tied to live migration schedule + assessment exam Goal: Run your first solo cutover. Pass the formal assessment. Receive sign-off to operate independently.

What “solo” means

Your first solo cutover has these properties:

  • You own the migration entirely — assessment to go-live
  • A senior DE is designated as on-call and available by phone/text during the cutover window
  • The senior DE does NOT review each step before you take it — you are accountable
  • The senior DE will review your post-cutover documentation and debrief with you within 24 hours

This is not a test — it is your first real independent migration. It’s designed to be a small, low-risk migration: single site, under 50 seats, standard SMB customer, no contact center, no compliance vertical.

Preparing for your solo cutover

One week before

  • Confirm the pre-migration checklist is completely signed by you (not co-signed — you sign it alone for the first time)
  • Confirm the FOC date with the carrier (phone call — not email)
  • Walk the senior DE through your migration plan: “Here’s what I’m doing on cutover night, here’s my rollback plan, here’s how I’ll handle a port failure.”
  • Senior DE approval to proceed: _______________________ Date: _______________

Three days before

  • Pre-cutover customer communication sent
  • Cutover contact card filled out — every phone number written down on paper
  • Cutover day checklist printed
  • Final platform configuration reviewed

Night of

  • Run the cutover.
  • Use the cutover day checklist exactly as written.
  • If you hit something you can’t resolve within 30 minutes, call the on-call senior DE.
  • Do not be proud about the phone call — making the call when you need it is correct behavior.

Post-cutover (within 24 hours)

  • Debrief with senior DE: walk through every step from the cutover night log
  • What went as planned?
  • What was different from what you expected?
  • If anything went wrong, walk through the diagnosis and resolution
  • What would you add to the pre-migration checklist, cutover checklist, or troubleshooting guide based on this migration?
  • If you identified a toolkit gap, add it

The formal assessment

Take this after Week 3 is complete and before your solo cutover results are reviewed. It is a written exam + a practical evaluation.

Location: assessment/deployment-engineer-assessment.md

Passing score:

  • Written section: ≥80% (80 points of 100)
  • Practical section: “Meets expectations” or higher on all 5 dimensions

What happens if you don’t pass:

  • Retake the sections you didn’t pass after additional study or practice
  • No limit on retakes
  • First solo cutover does not happen until the assessment is passed

Week 4 Readiness Check

After the solo cutover is complete and the assessment is passed:

  • Solo cutover completed: _______________________ Date: _______________
  • Post-cutover debrief held: _______________________ Date: _______________
  • Assessment passed: written ___ / 100, practical _______________
  • Manager sign-off — cleared for independent migration work

Certification sign-off: _______________________ Date: _______________

What comes next

You’re certified. You now build a migration caseload and work toward the Day 60 and Day 90 milestones in 10-30-60-90-plan.md.

The training docs stay available. The knowledge base is yours to add to. When you hit something that isn’t in the docs, add it — every DE after you benefits.

If you want to develop a specialty (contact center, FedRAMP, enterprise multi-site), talk to your manager about which cases to get assigned to.