Context
I spent four years as one half of a two-person IT team at Abbey Carpet, supporting three company sites. During that time the company replaced a set of its desktop computers with thin clients, and I owned that rollout from setup guide to decommissioning. It ran alongside larger infrastructure work I assisted with company-wide: a new Windows file server, an IIS web server, Remote Desktop Services, and a Hyper-V virtualization environment.
What I did
Wrote the setup guidelines first. Before touching a single machine, I documented how a new thin client should be set up, so every unit would come out the same no matter when it was configured.
Planned the rollout in phases. I created the process for a phased deployment instead of switching everyone over at once. Moving in phases limits how many people a problem can reach at one time.
Carried it out across two locations. I executed the deployment myself at both sites.
Retired the old machines. Decommissioning the old desktops was part of the rollout, not an afterthought, and I kept the IT asset records current as hardware changed: what moved where, what was on loan, and which software versions were on which equipment.
Why it matters
A rollout like this is mostly about predictability. Written guidelines made the setup repeatable, and phases made problems small. The same habit carried over to later work, where I also built the process for safely updating the company’s servers.