Engagement
Release-Wave Readiness Review
Pre-flight engineering review of your D365 customizations against an upcoming Microsoft release wave — find what will break before Microsoft ships it, with a fix plan you can execute before the update lands.
Baseline scope: 1 D365 environment, 1 wave target version, ≤30 customizations, ≤10 critical-path processes. Calendar clock starts after sandbox + target-version access is confirmed.
Who it is for
- F&O admin teams running customized D365 environments who have been bitten by service updates breaking customizations in past waves.
- CIOs and IT directors at organizations where a service-update outage triggers an exec-level incident review (regulated industries, high-volume retail, manufacturing in season).
- Microsoft partners delivering wave-readiness as a value-add to their top customers (white-label or co-delivered).
- Technical leads on Microsoft Wave 1 (April) or Wave 2 (October) early-update tracks who want a structured pre-update assessment.
Not for vanilla D365 environments with no customizations, customers covered by vendor-managed wave testing under MS Premier, or customers in the middle of an active service-update outage (use Production Stabilization Sprint).
Typical triggers
When teams reach out
- "Wave 1 release notes just dropped — we have 30 days to test, what do we focus on?"
- "Microsoft's deprecation list for this wave includes 3 things we use — how exposed are we?"
- "Last wave broke two of our X++ extensions and an integration retried for 4 hours before someone noticed — we do not want a repeat."
- "We had to roll back the last service update — we cannot have that happen again."
What you get
Deliverable
A 12–20 page wave-readiness report: Microsoft change inventory filtered to what affects you, risk-ranked findings (BLOCKING / SHOULD / NOTE), recommended fix plan with effort estimates, critical-path validation results, and explicit scope limits.
How it works
Timeline
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1
Kickoff 60 min
Confirm scope, target version, deadline. Share-folder access. Identify critical-path processes. Agree on what success looks like.
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2
Phase 1 — Map 5 business days
Pull the Microsoft release notes for the target version. Walk through your customization inventory and mark every place that intersects with a Microsoft-changed surface.
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3
Phase 2 — Test 3 business days
Spin up a sandbox on the target version, deploy the customizations, run targeted regression on the critical-path processes, capture failures and warnings.
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4
Phase 3 — Plan 2 business days
For each failure: severity, recommended fix, effort estimate. Ordered fix plan that fits inside your update window.
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5
Readout + report 90 min call + written report
Walk through findings. Surface anything that needs a decision. Written report follows within 3 business days.
Pricing
Fixed-fee — quoted on the scoping call
- Fixed fee for the baseline scope — 1 environment, 1 wave target version, ≤30 customizations, ≤10 critical-path processes.
- Scope factors that change the quote — more customizations, multi-region testing, both wave windows in one engagement, white-label delivery — are agreed up front.
- Payment: 50% on kickoff, 50% on the readiness report.
When we re-quote: We re-quote if the customization inventory exceeds 30, if multiple LEs or locales need targeted testing, or if you want both wave windows covered in one engagement.
Scope clarity
What this engagement is NOT
- Not the fix itself — this is the assessment and fix plan. Implementation is your team's, your partner's, or a separate Production Stabilization Sprint scope.
- Not a Microsoft Premier substitute. We cover the gap between "Microsoft ships the release" and "your team knows what to fix."
- Not continuous wave coverage. This is one engagement per wave; recurring half-year reviews can be packaged separately.
- Not a regression-suite build-out. We use the regression coverage you already have.
Ready to start?
Bring the relevant materials — architecture diagrams, recent logs, the decision under review — and we will scope from there.