Getting into an ADMS State of Mind

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Learning from utilities that have been through an ADMS implementation and other large-scale technology projects can help your utility avoid common project pitfalls and put your organization on the path to a successful deployment. Drawing from experience, this article outlines ten key lessons learned from implementing ADMS and other transformational projects at utility organizations.

Lesson 1: Leave your baggage at the door. Lift and shift shouldn’t be a thing here. While you have potentially spent decades refining your legacy systems and processes, an ADMS implementation is an opportunity to reevaluate and optimize. Trying to import your legacy system’s ‘baggage’ to reduce the needed change management can hinder your team from fully utilizing and embracing the system’s advanced capabilities.

Most likely, new systems will bring new challenges. The things that didn’t work as intended in your old systems may not be the same pain points and hurdles that your team encounters going forward. It’s best to start with an open mind so that you don’t box yourself out of taking advantage of more efficient processes and workflows.

Lesson 2: Complexity is the enemy of efficiency. Use your tribal or experience-based knowledge but try to approach your project as a clean slate. Identify what is truly necessary and rebuild leaner processes that align with your organization’s current and future needs. Especially for the workflows with years of experience and history embedded in them, there is a tendency to stack up a lot of exceptions to the rules over time, which can bog down efficiencies and be confusing for users. For much of the work in this space, workflows can be pared down to very simple steps: Create, Assign, Update, Monitor, Restore, Complete, Correct, Archive.

Lesson 3: Prioritize your project team. The success of an ADMS implementation hinges on your project team’s understanding and acceptance. Give them the time and resources they need to familiarize themselves with the system and all its intricacies. This may mean phasing in modules more slowly, providing additional training, or having a sandbox environment where technical teams can easily tinker and experiment before committing to changing the main promotion path. From the end-user side, early exposure to ADMS through project testing and continuous practice with any built-in product training simulators is key for ensuring a smooth transition.

Lesson 4: Adopt an agile approach where possible. The timelines for ADMS-related projects are usually expansive. Many factors will change over the lifecycle of a project at this scale, and you’ll learn a lot of things as you go. Other projects in your organization may offer conflicts or benefits. You may see attrition, retirements, or onboarding of new individuals during the course. All these things can shift perspectives and priorities. Taking an agile approach will enable your team to react to changing requirements, experiment and learn as they go, and put their knowledge and experience to use as they grow with the new ADMS.

Lesson 5: Maintain environment integrity. It’s tempting to rush into beta patches and quick fixes, but the more variety between environments and the less rigor in moving changes through, the harder it is to replicate issues when they are encountered. Have a plan for managing changes, both big and small, and stick to the plan.

Lesson 6: Build as many opportunities for practical practice as possible. Not all the nuances of production can be replicated in test systems but capture and reuse real-time data whenever possible. Bring the knowledge of real-time issues you’ve previously encountered into your test scripts and unstructured testing. Doing so provides opportunities to put the new system under real-world conditions for testing and allows your employees to practice familiar workflows in an unfamiliar environment.

Lesson 7: Every day is a testing day. Encourage continuous testing and curiosity with good documentation practices. Not everything will be scripted, and different people will approach the system in different ways. The more issues that shake out early, the better. I always recommend coming into testing with a little bit of chaotic good. The goal is not to pass the tests but to find the issues. This helps down the road with users who behave in less predictable ways or bring different backgrounds and experiences to their work. Things as innocuous as someone adjusting a font size or a background color can have impacts that may not surface with planned test parameters. Out of sequence transactions or refresh lag can confuse interface triggers.

For the more formalized tests, keep things modular. Small, simple tests of individual functions should be stackable to form complex scenarios and scalable to build up to performance testing levels. This concept seems simple, but it’s one of the hardest to maintain and manage. A solid foundation of test cases will not only serve your active project but should also serve as a good baseline for post-go-live support and maintenance.

Lesson 8: Approach ADMS with an open mind. It is important to remember that an ADMS project is generally a strategic move near the start of a larger transformational effort. It’s preparing your utility for more grid automation, micro gridding, and battery storage in the field. Control Centers and Dispatch may work together differently than they have in the past. Storm response may be different. Technical support with the information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) organizations may be different.

Your deployment won’t be perfect. From day one, it won’t have all the nuances and familiarities of your legacy processes. It will bring a lot of change, but it will also prepare your organization for changes to come and lay a solid foundation for future innovation and growth.

Lesson 9: Have confidence in your team. Choose vendors you can trust and trust the employees who work with your current systems, processes, and data day in and day out. Many have the experiences and learnings from past projects and are invaluable when it comes to avoiding project snags.

Lesson 10: ADMS is a powerful toolset. It is an extension of your operational systems and team. It will give back what you put into it. If you give it a solid foundation and a clean framework to build on, it will be an even more rewarding endeavor.

ADMS is a Transformation

As with any large-scale implementation, ADMS touches all parts of the organization. By embracing the lessons learned from transformational projects at other utilities, your organization can navigate the transition more smoothly and effectively. These lessons underscore the importance of planning, management, and adaptability in the success of large-scale technology projects and ADMS projects specifically.

Contact UDC for more information about ADMS preparation and read about our ADMS Readiness and Consulting services.