Completion Report

Project Summary:

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The Project Brief outlined the following objectives and deliverables; 

Objective 1 - Improve reliability of ASTA service by replacing the current infrastructure

1. Updated TAD and Operational Documentation, including recommendation for replacement infrastructure based on discussions with ASTA (complete)
2. New TEST and LIVE infrastructure (complete)

Objective 1 Closure Commentary - Objective met, however, the project experienced significant unplanned outages for an extended period from July 2013 to January 2014. Following the last software update in January the reliability of the service is significantly improved with unplanned outaged reduced to approx 1 per month (prior to the upgrade this was approx 1 per week). 

Objective 2 - Upgrade ASTA Powerproject to provide from improved performance

1. Prepared LIVE database (tasks unlinked from timesheet and years 09/10 and 10/11 archived using the ASTA Archive Manager Functionality) (complete)
2. LIVE database copied and sent to ASTA for pre-upgrade install steps (complete)
3. Upgrade ASTA Teamplan on new infrastructure (complete)
4. Upgrade ASTA Timehseet on new infrastructure (complete)
5. Migrate ASTA License manager to new infrastructure (Partially complete - during the live upgrade it was confirmed by ASTA that this could not be moved as was hoped)

Objective 2 Closure Commentary - Objective met, users have reported notable improved performance on timesheet creation. 

Objective 3 - Maintain all current ASTA Functionality

1. Test upgraded Teamplan and Timesheet  (complete)
2. Reapply any configuration required to maintain functionality currently provided to all users  (complete)

Objective 3 Closure Commentary - Objective met

Objectives 4 - Refreshing Knowledge

1. Review existing documentation and update if required as a result of the upgrade  (partially complete - guidance requires a full refresh to bring inline with current processes but this was not required as a result of the upgrade)
2. Review access to user documentation and, if required, create WIKI site for central access to all guidance (complete)
3. Republish documentation for Timesheet users (general users, Project Managers and Resource/Team Managers) (complete)
4. Republish documentation for Teamplan users (complete)
5. Review and, if agreed, deliver refresher training for Teamplan users (not required)

Objective 4 Closure Commentary - Objective met, ASTA WIKI revised and republished to users. The WIKI and supporting guidance will be refreshed as part of the APP004-27 ASTA Year End 13/14 Project where enhancements will be introduced that will require Directors Office, Resource Managers and Project Managers guidance to be updated. 

The Project Brief documented the Success Criteria as; 

1. The service is successfully migrated and upgraded into a virtual flexible infrastructure, it is hoped this will lead to improved reliability and performance. Currently unplanned outages are occurring on a weekly basis during peak timesheet submission periods. Therefore the target is for a reduction in unplanned outages to less than 5 per month - This was finally met following a lengthy period of instability and 3 updates from the software provided by ASTA. 
2. legacy data for 09/10 and 10/11 is archived successfully, reducing the operational dataset, it is hoped that this will improve service reliability and performance. - Data set was archived although any perceived improvements in performance resulting from teh archive was minimal. 
3. Following the upgrade all existing functionality is maintained and operates successfully, all new features of the upgraded product also function correctly - achieved 
4. ASTA timesheet user base are better aware of functionality available through web client - no poll has been taken to determine if this criterion has been met.

Analysis of Resource Usage:

Staff Usage Estimate: 15 days

Staff Usage Actual: 82 days

Staff Usage Variance: 447%

Other Resource Estimate: 1700 days

Other Resource Actual: 1 days

Other Resource Variance: -100%

Explanation for variance:

The ASTA Upgrade experienced significant issues post the LIVE migration which impacted both the budget and plan. This variance can be split in to two main areas, the upgrade and LIVE issues. 

Budget Variance

The Upgrade was originally estimated as 15 days effort, actual effort was 33 days. The increase of 18 days can be attributed to; 

• 2 days additional PM, Governance and resourcing effort
• 7 days additional effort for the design and implementation of the new ASTA archiving process and software. Only 0.5 days was included in the original estimate as this was expected to be a minor firewall change but this process was not understood from ASTA documentation and the University's firewall setup caused complexities for implementation. 
• 9 additional days were required for the TAD, Operations Document and the preparation required for the new virtual servers and firewall configuration. The previous TAD was outdated by a number of years and lacked key information related to required firewall configuration. The Operations document did not exsist and this was not estimated in the original estimate. 

The LIVE issues experienced almost immediattely from the LIVE upgrade resulted in the ASTA services being significantly impacted with multiple weekly outages from July to January. As the service was unstable this could not be handed over to Production Management support until end February at the earliest, however, with resource conflicts within Development Technology the actual handover did not take place until June 2014. 

• The unplanned LIVE work to regulraly restart the service between July 2013 and January 2014 expended 10 days effort which was not included in the original plan. 

In addition to the regular restarts the following actions were taken which attributed to a further 32 days effort; 

• 19 days effort was spent completing investigations, both with and without ASTA, troubleshooting the network as possible causes of the outages, checking errors logs and providing ASTA information and backups. 
• 5 days effort was required to move the TEST and LIVE database from the database server to the application server
• 8 days effort was spent installing 3 new versions of the software provided from ASTA in August, October and January. This also included effort to update documentation to refelct changes. 

A further 7 days effort for Project Management, Governance and Resourcing was required between the period from August 2013 to June 2014 to cover the extended period of the project due to the ongoing LIVE issues. 

Project Plan and Summary of Issues

The project plan was extended due to the ongoing LIVE issues. The Upgrade took place as planned in July 2013 and the service remained unstable to January 2014. Deployment sign off finally took place in June 2014 once the DBA was available to complete the final updates required to the documentation and handover the service to Technology Management. 

July 2013 to August 2013

• almost daily outages were experienced following the upgrade from July 2013 to August 2013
• Investigations focused on volume of users impacting the software and triggering an unplanned outage of the enterprise application (which is needed for both timesheet and powerproject)
• Suggested changes identified by both ASTA and UoE investigations were implemented to TEST and LIVE mid August
• Very little improvement, if any, was experienced following the updates. 

August 2013 to September 2013

• Almost daily outages continued through to end September
• During this period wider network and some underlying issues with the virtual infrastructure were also experienced and impacted the service
• UoE took the decision to move the database to the same server as the Enterprise application to determine whether co-locating the services provided any improvement. 
• Outages reduced but were still occuring multiple times per week. 

September 2013 to October 2013

• Multiple unplanned outages per week continued 
• ASTA provided a new version of the software as other clients had reported connection problems, this was installed in October 2013
• Updated software did not fully resolve the outages

October 2013 to January 2014

• Unplanned outaged reduced following the database move and the software update but still occured weekly, with powerproject users impacted the most
• ASTA provided a further updated version of the enterprise software
• Following resource conflicts due to staff leaving and higher priority projects, the updated version of the software was installed in LIVE mid January
• Outages significantly reduced to approx. 1 per month 

January 2014 to July 2014

• The few unplanned outages could be attributed to the service not being restarted properly following server patching or database space on the server
• Handover to Technology Management was delayed due to resource conflicts with the Technical Architect in particular for COM008 O365 for Staff Migration, ITS054 MyEd Upgrade and EST063 Space Audit Upgrade
• Handover to Technology Management was succesfully completed in June 2014 and documentation finalised. 

Key Learning Points:

1. Handover to Production Management should have been pushed further so to not continue to require Development Technology resource for restarts. It was not possible to obtain agreement to hand this over prior to the final software update in January, however, this significantly impacted the service as Development Technology were not set up to provide this urgent on demand service. If this had not been an IS Apps service would this have been allowed to continue without pressure to move to a more reactive support? 

2. The effort required to understand a third party product firewall requirements within the University setup should not be under estimated. The complexity of the University firewall rules and the changes required were not fully understood and required a trial and error approach to determine the required configuration. ASTA were unable to support this this fully as they did not have an understanding of our firewall set up. 

Outstanding issues:

1. ASTA Database still co-exists on the application server - this was agreed with Development Technology and Technology Management so to not risk the stability of the service. For noting only, no action required at this date.
2. ASTA Timesheet restricted to edLan acces only as there are security risks involved with sending passwords over an unsecured network. TAD notes this decision.

Above are noted in PICCL 18 and the deployment sign off, there is no further action at this point and are noted for information. 

Outstanding action; 

1. TAD and Operations document to be added to the appropriate location on the WIKI