Completion Report
Project Summary:
Objectives
- The objectives of the project was to migrate EBIS on-line from ColdFusion 9 to Cold Fusion 11
The objective has been achieved.
Deliverables
The deliverables are to:
- Have EBIS On-line running on the latest ColdFusion 11 server. - Migrate folders containing estates drawings and associated layers to the ColdFusion 11 server. - Ensure any applications that access Estates drawings correctly map to the new locations.
The deliverables have been achieved.
Scope
The scope was to:
- Migrate EBIS On-line to ColdFusion 11 server. - Migrate drawings / layers to the ColdFusion 11 server. - Test the functionality of EBIS On-line - Test the functionality of applications that access estates drawings.
Schedule - The schedule was to complete the upgrade ahead of the 31st July cut-off date.
This has been achieved, although the project slipped its dates a number of times (see issues).
Overall, the project has taken approximately 5 months elapsed.
Milestone History
Milestone | Baseline Date | Final Date |
End of Planning | 26/02 | 26/02 |
Acceptance Sign Off | 27/05 | 27/06 |
Deployment | 02/06 | 28/06 |
Project Close | 16/06 | 12/07 |
Budget Analysis
Phase(s) | Project Services |
| Apps Dev |
| Dev tech |
| Other |
| TOTAL |
|
| Planned | Actual | Planned | Actual | Planned | Actual | Planned | Actual | Planned | Actual |
Project Mgmt | 11 | 15.6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 14 | 15.6 |
Planning | 0 | 4.7 | 2 | 0.7 | 1 | 0.5 | 2 | 0.8 | 5 | 6.7 |
System analysis / Design / Build | 0 | 1.9 | 7 | 5.9 | 4 | 10.5 | 2 | 2.7 | 13 | 21 |
Integration / Acceptance | 0 | 0.3 | 3.5 | 2 | 3.5 | 4 | 8 | 3.4 | 15 | 9.7 |
Deploy / Close | 0 | 1.1 | 1 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 0.6 | 4.5 | 4.1 | 7 | 6.3 |
TOTAL | 11 | 23.6 | 13.5 | 9.1 | 10 | 15.6 | 19.5 | 11 | 54 | 59.3 |
Issues encountered
The project scope remained largely in scope. However, little was known regarding the impact that moving the drawing would have, given the infrastructure complexities surrounding Samba shares and the way the drawings and layers are used by various applications.
In addition the move from a Solaris to a Linux OS meant that the existing conversion software that enables drawings to be rendered in EBIS On-line (Autoviz) no longer worked. This has been replaced by a new conversion tool from the same supplier called Autoxchange. The existing licence for 1 LIVE instance was transferred, with an additional annual $700 USD payable, to cover licences DEV, TEST and LIVE-DR. Finally, we had additional issues obtaining a set of working licence keys across our environments. This project has been running in parallel with EST080 Estates Helpdesk project. This has caused some contention; this project is working with a live copy of the application, whereas EST080 has required changes be made to EBIS On-line. We were therefore required to overwrite the EST080 changes when we moved into the TEST environment. However we did not overwrite the DB changes in terms of Schemas and stored procedures. This has caused some phantom errors to be flagged during testing. The intention was to have a more aggressive timescale in order to minimise any impact on EST080; however this has not been possible due to the issues encountered.
It has been a challenge securing the small (but critical) packets of time from IS colleagues, particularly Dev Tech, due to already acknowledged resource constraints. This has meant that issues that could have been solved in a matter of days ended up dragging on for weeks.
The Estates dept has had a number of competing initiatives and other projects during the lifecycle of the project. This has led to some samba share issues taking longer than expected to resolve.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the many people who got involved in the project. Special mentions go to Martin Jones, Mark Dobbing, Ron Mcleod and Jane Brodie from Estates. And finally thanks to Andy Stewart for his support and advice throughout the project lifecycle. .
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 49 days
Staff Usage Actual: 59 days
Staff Usage Variance: 20%
Other Resource Estimate: 0 days
Other Resource Actual: 500 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Explanation for variance:
- issues with Samba shares for migrated drawings.
- Issues with Autoviz (Autoxchange drawing software.
- Issues with resource availability.
- Confflicts with parallel project EST080.
Key Learning Points:
1) Improved documentation and understanding is required regarding the use of Estates drawings and Samba shares. This would reduce the effort required to execute any future drawings move. Apps mgmt. have created a new set of support documents, as part of the project close activity. https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=26838620
2) An associated question to 1) is whether or not the drawings need to reside on the ColdFusion 11 server at all; it may be beneficial to move them to an independent location.
3) In the opinion of the PM, the project has taken longer than necessary, due to resource constraints especially within IS. With more a dedicated resource allocation across the IS stakeholders, I believe the issues encountered could have been solved in a more timely and efficient manner. 4) In the opinion of the PM, the disconnected nature of the way the project has been resourced has had a negative impact on the agility of the project to deliver, especially where quick decisions and actions could have been made to resolve competing initiatives e.g. EST080.
5) In the opinion of the PM, the amount of PM effort required has been disproportionate to the overall size of the project.
6) In the opinion of the PM, with numerous Cold Fusion migrations happening at the same time, it may have made more sense to bundle them together and take a more production line approach to the schedule of work. This would have addressed points 3), 4) and 5) above.
7) The conversion of the application to support Bamboo deployment has been a success. None of the UAT errors encountered have been attributable to this conversion.
8) The Estates EST080 project should include EBIS On-line within the scope of their testing. We uncovered some unexpected errors, relating to changes in the database that should not have had an impact on EBIS on-line. For example the addition of a field caused an ambiguous SQL reference error and the conversion of the contents of a field from numeric to alphanumeric caused an error in an input form.
9) As a reference point for any future EBIS On-line UAT activities (particularly when upgrading environments), the following should be carefully tested :- - Drawings functionality. - Links to Serengeti, used for viewing document images.
Outstanding issues:
None