Overview

Background

This is a multi-year project to manage the on-going maintenance and development of the Active Directory Platform Driver and associated tools. The driver software handles account maintenance based on information pulled from the Identity Management System, allowing for authetication to the Microsoft Windows infrastructure for staff, students and visitors. The code is developed and maintained in-house.

It is recognised that this service needs regular development and maintenance year on year and due to the nature of changing business requirements requires to be agile and responsive to change when it is requested. This project is to place the necessary work on a formally managed basis and provide the resource to support this.

Scope

User account driver

Structure driver

AD helpline tools

DB services on Panacea to support AD

Grouper

Web gateway fro LDAP lookups

Objectives

Stage 1 - this is likely to carry through until June 2016

Place development and maintenance of codebase on a formal project basis

Modernise the development of the driver software - establishing a development environment that is fit for purpose and will allow for a more agile response to testing and rolling out future changes and ehancements when required.

Move existing code into the new environment - versioning, auditing

Be in a position to provide monthly releases of driver into production

Document the service - this is a large and important task and likely requires scoping on its own as it involves code, processes, policies and procedures along with technical information for developers and support information for those fielding queries that require knowledge of how the service operates and impacts on users.

Ensure colleagues are in a position to support the codebase and remove reliance on a single member to provide support and assistance

Deliverables

Stage 1 is to provide an environment for development of the codebase that is fit for purpose to allow future on-going work on this service.

Ensure documentation is up to date and reflects what is in place - as noted above this is quite complex and needs scoping.

Benefits

Codebase becomes easier to support with versioning and auditing of changes in place

Test and rollout of changes more efficient and less error prone if move to a monthly release cycle

Trouble-shooting problems easier

Success Criteria

Development environment in place and working.

Requested changes in pipeline tested and rolled out using new environment into production successfully

Documentation sets in place and treated as living documents

Ability to plan stage 2 based on stage 1 completed and signed-off as fit for purpose